'^^ ^ <^\ \h 3 9007 0237 2752 Date Due & Mny p 1 2000 .OCT 2 a 2000 h4C ^mr ^ M c rues THE SCARLET LETTER AND THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 0 c^~^ T U( 1^ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY / f a _ xa3 <3L\}t Eitoersi&e press", v HESTER AT HER NEEDLE. Ill sin in other hearts. She was terrpr-stricken by the revelations~that were thus made. What were they ? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie,_and that, if truth__were-averywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester I^^neV? OrT^must she receive those intimations — so obscure, yet so distinct — as truth ? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Some- times the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable min- ister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. " What evil thing is at hand ? " would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing hu- man within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint ! Again, a mystic sisterhood would ^cojii. tumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's, — what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning, — " Behold, Hester, here is a companion ! " — and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glanc- ing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks ; as 112 THE SCARLET LETTER. if her purity wer^ somewhat sullied by that momen- tary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere ? — such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself. The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were al- ways contributing a grotesque horror to what inter- ested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They. averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red- hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hes- ter's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredidity may be inclined to admit. i-^i:^ , VI. PEARL. We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant ; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immor- tal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty pas- sion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child ! Her Pearl ! — For so had Hester called her ; not as a name expressive of her asj)ect, which had nothing of the calm, white, imimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant " Pearl," as being of gTcat price, — purchased with all she had, — her mother's only treas- ure ! How strange, indeed ! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy coidd reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus pun- ished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soid in heaven ! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehen- sion. She Itnew that her deed had been evil ; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be 114 THE SCARLET LETTER. good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild pecidiarity, that shoidd correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being. Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its per- fect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden ; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty ; its attire, however sim- ple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose, that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye. So mag- nificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her, on the dark- some cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety ; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost ; and if, in any of PEARL. 115 her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herseK, — it would have been no longer Pearl. This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety ; but — or else Hester's fears deceived her — it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her exist- ence, a great law had been broken ; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder ; or \^ith an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of va- riety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character — and even then most vaguely and imperfectly — by recalling what she herself had been, dm'ing that momentous period while Pearl was imbib- ing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's im- passioned state had been the mediimi through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life ; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untem- pered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was per- petuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, des- perate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later ui the day of IIG THE SCARLET LETTER. eartlily existence might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind. The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, en joined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of err- ing on the side of midue severity. Mindful, how- ever of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside, and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As to any other kind of dis- cipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, lit- tle Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew ac- quainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist, per- suade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet in- explicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rath- er an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would PEARL. 117 flit away with a mecking smile. Whenever that look , appeared in her wild, bright, deeply-black eyes, it in- ' vested her with a strange remoteness and intangibil- m ity ; it was as if she were hovering in the air and ^^^P might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we-|(j^j;X\2-^ know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child, — to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began, — to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses, — not so much from overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubt- ful than before. Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treas- ure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps, — for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her, — Pearl woidd frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than be- fore, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of hu- man sorrow. Or — but this more rarely happened — she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly safe in confiding lierseK to that gusty tenderness ; it passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to 118 THE SCARLET LETTER. win the master-word that should control this new and inc'onipreheusible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, deli- cious happiness ; until — perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering- from beneath her opening lids — little Pearl awoke ! I low soon — with what strange rapidity, indeed ! — did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words ! And then what a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other child- ish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children ! But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the chUd comprehended her loneliness ; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle romid about her ; the whole pecvdiarity, in short, of her position in re- spect to other children. Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town. Pearl, too, was there ; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a fore- finger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture would permit ; playing at going to PEARL. 119 church, perchance ; or at scourging Quakers ; or tak- ing scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians ; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make ac- quaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did. Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother trem- ble because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue. The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague, idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child ; and therefore scorned them m their hearts, and not unf re- quently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother ; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, in- stead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. It appalled her, neverthe- less, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood to- gether in the same circle of seclusion from human so- ciety; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since be- gun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity. 120 THE SCARLET LETTER. At home, ^A'itllin and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of ac- quaintance. The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and commimicated itself to a thou- sand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials — a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower — were the puppets, of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any out- ward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a midtitude of imaginary per- sonages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine- .trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders ; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was wonderfid, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuit}'-, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preter- natural activity, — soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life, — and suc- ceeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little moie than was observable in other children of bright faculties ; except as Pearl, in the dearth of hmnan plajonates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence PEARL. 121 sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad — then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause ! — to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good her cause in the contest that must ensue. Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she woidd fain have hidden, but which made ut- terance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, — " O Father in Heaven, — if Thou art still my Father, — what is this being which I have brought into the world ! " And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face ujDon her mother, smile with sprite-like ki- telligence, and resume her play. One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing wliich she had noticed in her life was — what? — not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discus- sion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means ! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to be- come aware was — shall we say it ? — the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom ! One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the let- ter ; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch 1-22 THE SCARLET LETTER. the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away ; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the in- telligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smue ! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety ; not a moment's calm enjojTnent of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter ; but then, again, it woiUd come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes. Once, this freakish, elfish cast came into the child's eyes, wliile Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing ; and, suddenly, — for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions, — she fancied that she beheld, not her ovm miniature poi*trait, but another face, in the small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion. In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused her- self with gathering handf ids of wild-flow^ers, and fling- ing them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dan- cing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether PEARL. 123 from pride or resignation, or a feeling that lier pen- ance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out — or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it — from the imsearehable abyss of her black eyes. " Child, what art thou ? " cried the mother. " Oh, I am your little Pearl ! " answered the child. But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney. " Art thou my child, in very truth ? " asked Hester. Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnest- ness ; for, such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother haK doubted whether she were not ac- quainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now reveal herself. " Yes ; I am little Pearl ! " repeated the child, con- tinuing her antics. " Thou art not my child ! Thou art no Pearl of mine ! " said the mother, half playfully ; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. " Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither." " Tell me, mother ! " said the child, seriously, com- 124 THE SCARLET LETTER. ing up to Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. " Do thou tell me ! "' " Thy Heavenly Father sent thee ! " answered Hes- tex Prjaine. But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put uj) her small forefinger, and touched the scarlet letter. " He did not send me ! " cried she, positively. " I have no Heavenly Father ! " " Hush, Pearl, hush ! Thou must not talk so I " an- swered the mother, suppressing a groan. " He sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more, thee ! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come ? " " Tell me ! Tell me ! " repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing, and capering about the floor. " It is thou that must tell me ! " But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered — betwixt a smile and a shudder — the talk of the neigh- boring townspeople ; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offsj)ring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed ; nor was Pearl the only chUd to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New England Puritans. vn. THE governor's HALL. Hester Prtnne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state ; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honorable and influ- ential place among the colonial magistracy. Another and far more important reason than the de- livery of a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settle- ment. It had reached her ears, that there was a de- sign on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherisliing the more rigid order of princijiles in relig- ion and government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prosj)ect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardiansliip than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted 126 THE SCARLET LETTER. the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and indeed not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later days, woiUd have been referred to no liigher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight, than the weKare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legisla- tors and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute con- cerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature. Full of concern, therefore, — but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other, — Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cot- tage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from morn till sunset, coidd have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms ; but was soon as imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tum- ble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty ; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints ; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 127 depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her ; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passion- ate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imag- ination their full play ; arraying her in a crimson vel- vet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much streng-th of coloring, which must have gi v^en a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admi- rably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth. But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresist- ibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token wliich Hester Pyrnne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form ; the scarlet letter endowed with life ! The mother herself — as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her concei3tions assumed its form — had carefully wrought out the similitude ; lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other ; and only in consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to rep- resent the scarlet letter in her appearance. As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play, — or what passed for play with those som- bre little urchins, — and spake gravely one to an- other : — 128 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter ; and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter rmining along by her side ! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them ! " But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frown- ing, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the Icnot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence, — the scarlet fever, or some such half -fledged angel of judgment, — whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the . hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The victory accom- plished. Pearl retm-ned quietly to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face. Without further adventure, they reached the dwell- ing of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wood- en house, built in a fashion of which there are speci- mens still extant in the streets of our older towTis ; now moss-grown, crmnbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyfid occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect ; the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed ; so that, when the sun- shine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 129 against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the ad- miration of after times. Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, be- gan to caper and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with. " No, my little Pearl ! " said her mother. " Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee ! " They approached the door ; which was of an arched form, and iBanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice- windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the por- tal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was an- swered by one of the Governor's bond-servants ; a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England. " Is the worshipful Governor BeUingham within ? " inquired Hester. "Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. VOL. V. 9 130 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Yea, liis honorable worship is within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now." " Nevertheless, I will enter," replied Hester Prynne, and the bond-servant, perhaps judging- from the deci- sion of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered no oppo- sition. So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations, sug- gested by the nature of his building-materials, diver- sity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communica- tion, more or less directly, with all the other apart- ments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed haU-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cusliion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chron- icles of England, or other such substantial literature ; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers ; and likewise a table in the same taste ; the whole being of the Elizar bethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, trans- THE GOVERNOR'S HALL, 131 f erred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On the table — in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind — stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale. On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All wei-e characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invaria- bly put on ; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and en- joyments of living men. At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pic- tures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date ; for it had been manufactm^ed by a skilful armorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel head- piece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath ; all, and es- pecially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumi- nation everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as a states- man and ruler. 132 THE SCARLET LETTER. Little Pearl — who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house — spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate. " Mother," cried she, " I see you here. Look ! Look!" Hester looked, by way of humoring the child ; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this con- vex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exag- gerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the head- piece ; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelli- gence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape. " Come along. Pearl," said she, drawing her away. " Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there ; more beautifid ones than we find in the woods." Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in THE GOVERNOR'S HALL. 183 plain sight ; and a piunpkin-vine, rooted at some dis- tance, had run across the intervening space, and de- posited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window ; as if to warn the Governor that this great liunp of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple- trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula ; that half -mythological personage, who rides thi'ough our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified. " Hush, child, hush ! " said her mother, earnestly. " Do not cry, dear little Pearl ! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and gentlemen along with him ! " In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a num- ber of persons were seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldrii£li,scream, and then became silent ; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance of these new personages. vni. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap, — such as elderly gentlemen loved to emliie^em- selves with, in their domestic privacy, — walked fore- most, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reicrn, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a. charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an error to suppose that our grave fore- fathers— though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty — made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly Avithin their grasp. This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor, John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was Been over Governor Bellingham' s shoulder ; while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish, THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 135 against the sunny garden -wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things ; and however stem he might show himseK in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his pro- fessional contemporaries. Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests : one the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's dis- grace ; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger Chillingworth, a person of gTeat skill in physic, who, for two Or three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young min- ister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and du- ties of the pastoral relation. The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throAving open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and partially concealed her. " What have we here ? " said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. " I profess, I have never seen the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time ; and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my hall ? " 136 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Ay, indeed ! " cried good old Mr. Wilson. " What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be ? Methiuks I have seen just such figures, when the sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedi- zen thee in this strange fashion ? Art thou a Chris- tian child, — ha ? Dost know thy catechism ? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of Papistry, in n>erry old England ? " " I am mother's chUd," answered the scarlet vision, " and my name is Pearl ! " " Pearl ? — Ruby, rather I — or Coral ! — or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue ! " re- sponded the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. " But where is this mother of thine ? All ! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor Bellingham, whis- pered, " This is the selfsame child of whom we have held speech together ; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester Prynne, her mother ! " " Sayest thou so ? " cried the Governor. " Nay, we might have judged that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of Babylon ! But she comes at a good time ; and we will look into this matter forthwith." Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three guests. " Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stem regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, " there hath been much question concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 137 are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world. Sjaeak thou, the child's owti mother ! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth ? What canst thou do for the child, in this kind ? " " I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this ! " answered Hester Prynne, laying her fin- ger on the red token. " Woman, it is thy badge of shame ! " replied the stern magistrate. " It is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands." " Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, " this badge hath taught me — it daily teaches me — it is teaching me at this moment — lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and bet- ter,jillbgit^they can profit nothing to myself." " We will judge warily," said Bellingham, " and look well what we are about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this Pearl — since that is her name, — and see whether she hath had such Christian nurture as befits a child of her age." The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch of familiar- ity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step looking like a wild tropical bird, of rich pkimage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not a little 138 THE SCARLET LETTER.. astonished at this outbreak, — for he was a grand- fatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children, — essayed, however, to proceed with the examination. " Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, " thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?" Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, mibibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime, coidd have borne a fair examination in the New Eng:- land Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough pos- session of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's questions, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door. This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window ; together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in com- ing hither. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 139 Old Eoger Chillingwortli, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was star- tled to perceive what a change had come over his fea= tm'es, — how much uglier they were, — how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen, — since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an in- stant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward. " This is awfid ! " cried the Governor, slowly recov- ering from the astonishment into which Pearl's re- sponse had thrown him. " Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her ! With- out question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny ! Methinks, gentlemen, we need mquire no further." Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed mdefeasible. rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death. " God gave me the child ! " cried she. " He gave her in requital^of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness ! — she is my torture, none the less ! Pearl keeps me here in life ! Pearl punishes me too ! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin ? Ye shall not take her ! I will die first ! " " My poor woman," said the not unkind old minis- 140 THE SCARLET LETTER. ter, "the child shall be well cared for! — far better than thou canst do it." " God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. " I will not give her up ! " — And here, by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. — " Speak thou for me ! " cried she. " Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child ! Speak for me ! Thou knowest, — for thou hast s}Tnpathies which these men lack ! — thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter ! Look thou to it ! I will not lose the child ! Look to it ! " At this wild and singidar appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly ner- vous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care^ogl-and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public igno- miny ; and whether it were his failing health, or what- ever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth. " There is truth in what she says," began the minis- ter, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, inso- much that the hall reechoed, and the hollow armor rang with it, — "truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 141 its nature and requirements, — both seemingly so pe- culiar, — whicli no other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacred- ness in the relation between this mother and this chHd?" " Ay ! — how is that, good Master Dimmesdale ? " interrupted the Governor. " Make that plain, I pray you!" " It must be even so," resumed the minister. ." For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no ac- count the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the hand of God, to ■work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing, for the one blessing of her life ! It was meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too ; a torture to be felt at many an imthought-of moment ; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought ill the garb of the poor chUd, so forcibly reminding us of that red sjnnbol which sears her bosom ? " " Well said, again ! " cried good Mr. Wilson. " 1 feared the woman had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child ! " "Oh, not so ! — not so ! " continued Mr. Dimmes- dale. " She recognizes, believe me, the solemn mira- cle which God hath wrought, in the existence of that chUd. And may she feel, too, — what, methinks, is the very truth, — that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to pre- 142 THE SCARLET LETTER. serve her from blacker depths of siu into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her ! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care, — to be ti-ained up by her to righteousness, — to remind her, at every mo- ment, of her fall, — but yet to teach her, as it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them ! " " You speak, my friend, mth a strange earnestness," said old Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him. " And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken," added the Reverend Mr. Wil- son. " What say you, worshipful Master BeUing- ham ? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor wom- an?" " Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, " and hath aijduced such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands ; so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to school and to meeting." The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had with- drawTi a few steps from the group, and stood mth his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the win- dow-curtains; wliile the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremvdous with THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER. 143 the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little eK, stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unob- trusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself, ■ — " Is that my Pearl ? " Yet she knew that there was' love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her life- time had been softened by such gentleness as now. The minister, — for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of child- ish preference, accorded^spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imj^ly in us some- thing truly worthy to be loved, — the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. Little Pearl's un- wonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer ; she laughed, and went caperuig down the hall, so airily, that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor. " The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I pro- fess," said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. " She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal! " " A strange child ! " remarked old Roger Chilling- worth. " It is easy to see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child's nature, and, from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?" " Nay ; it would be sinf vd, in such a question, to fol- low the clew of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. " Better to fast and pray upon it ; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, imless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, 144 THE SCARLET LETTER. every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the poor, deserted babe." The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Pr}Tine, with Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch. " Hist, hist ! " said she, wliile her ill-omened phys- iognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of tlie house. " Wilt thou go with us to- night ? There will be a merry company in the forest ; and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne shovdd make one." " Make my excuse to him, so please you ! " answered Hester, with a triumphant smile. " I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood ! " " We shall have thee there anon ! " said the witch- lady, frowning, as she drew back her head. But here — if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable — was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundeiung the rela- tion of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus early had the chUd saved her from Satan's snarCc rx. THE LEECH. Under the appellation of Roger Chillingwortli, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved shoidd never more be spoken. It has been related how, in the crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel- worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerful- ness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling aroimd her in the public market- place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her mispotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dis- honor, — which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sa- credness of their previous relationship. Then why — since the choice was with himself — should the indi- vidual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so lit- tle desirable ? He resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknov/n to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and inter- VOL. v. 10 146 THE SCARLET LETTER. ests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose ; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his fac- ulties. In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his resi- dence in the Puritan town, as Roger Cliillingworth, without other introduction than the learning and in- telligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made liim extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented himself, and as such w^as cordially re- ceived. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and that they lost the sj)iritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had liitherto lain in the guar- dianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body Koger Cliillingworth was a THE LEECH. 147 brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his famil- iarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic ; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the prop- erties of native herbs and roots ; nor did he conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines, Na- ture's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large* a share of his own confidence as the Em'opeau phar- macopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating. This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New England Church as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clog- ging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were reaUy going to die, it was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to 148 THE SCARLET LETTER. be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to remove him, it woidd be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there coidd be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated ; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it ; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easUy heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of skill ; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was value- less to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby, and other famous men, — whose scien- tific attainments were esteemed hardly less than super- natural, — as having been liis correspondents or asso- ciates. Why, with such rank in the learned woild, had he come hither ? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wUderness ? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground, — and, however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people, — that Heaven had wrought an absolute mira- THE LEECH. 149 cle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air, and set- ting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study ! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in Koger Chillingworth's so opportime arrival. This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever manifested in the young cler- gyman ; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anx- ious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The el- ders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importimate that he should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skiU. Mr. Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties. "I need no medicine," said he. But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before, — when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart ? Was he weary of his labors ? Did he wish to die ? These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr, Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of~Bbston and the deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, " dealt with him " on the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He listened in si- lence, and finally promised to confer with the physi- cian. 150 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dim- mesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he re- quested old Koger Chillingworth's professional advice, " I coidd be well content that my labors, and my sor- rows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf." " Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quiet- ness which, whether imposed or natural, marked aU his deportment, " it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthfid men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily ! And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem." " Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, " were I worthier to walk there, I could be bet- ter content to toil here." " Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician. In this manner, the mysterious old Roger ChiUing- worth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to sjiend much time together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants ^vith healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest ; mingling various talk with the plash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-an- THE LEECH. 151 them amonw the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of study and retire- ment. There was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he rec- ognized an intellectual cidtivation of no moderate depth or scope ; together with a range and freedom of ideas that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician, Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely de- veloped, and an order of mind that impelled itseK powerfidly along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views ; it woidd always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron frame- work. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe thi*ough the mediiun of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So the minister, and the phy- sician with liim, withdrew again within the limits of what their church defined as orthodox. Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefidly, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of V)2 THE SCARLET LETTER. thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imag- ination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its ground- work there. So Roger ChiIling\vorth — the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician — strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his prin- ciples, prying into his recollections, and probing every- tliiiig with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more, — let us call it intui- tion ; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagree- ably prominent characteristics of his own ; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought ; if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word, to indicate that all is un- derstood ; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognized char- acter as a physician, — then, at some inevitable mo- ment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and THE LEECH. 153 flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight. Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enimierated. Nevertheless, time went on ; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon ; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of mat- ters that seemed personal to themselves ; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, in- deed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bod- ily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve ! After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrange- ment by which the two were lodged in the same house ; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town when this greatly desirable object was at- tained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare ; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, sj^ir- itually devoted to him, to become his devoted ^ife. This latter step, however, there was no present pros- pect that Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take ; he rejected all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, there- 154 THE SCARLET LETTER. fore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his uusavoiy morsel always at another's board, and en- dure the life-long chill whieli must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it tridy seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevo- lent old physician, with his^concord of paternal and reverential love for the yoimg pastor,, was the very man of all mankind to be constantly within reach of his voice. The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house cov- ering jjretty nearly the site on which the venerable structm'e of King's Chapel has since been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home- field, on one side, and so well adapted to call uj) seri- ous reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny exposiu'e, and heavy wnndow-curtains, to create a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestiy, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and at all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bath- sheba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still un- faded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. Here, the pale clergjTuan piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they yilififid and de- cried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves. On the other side of the house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and lab- oratory ; not such as a modern man of science would THE LEECH. 155 reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to tiu'u to purpose. With such com- modiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his o\\ti domain, yet fa- miliarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another's business. And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best dis- cerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasona- bly imagined that the hand of Pro\adence had done all this, for the purpose — besought in so many pub- lic, and domestic, and secret prayers — of restoring the young minister to health. But — it must now be said — another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see wdth ; its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When,J however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclu- sions thus attained are often so profoimd and so unerring, as to possess the character of truths super- naturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chilb'ng worth by no fact or argmment worthy of seri- ous refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone ; he testified to ha\'ing seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company "wdth Doc- tor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was im- 156 THE SCARLET LETTER. plicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attain- ments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly mi- raculous cures by their skill in the black art. A large number — and many of these were persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been valuable in other matters — affirmed that Roger Chillingworth's aspect had imdergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Dim- mesdale. At first his expression had been calm, med- itative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and e^dl in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel ; and so, as might be expected, his vis- age was getting sooty with the smoke. To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely dif- fused opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haimted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which THE LEECH. 157 lie would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, neverthe- less, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must struggle towards his triumph. Alas ! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one, and the victory anything but secure. X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been cahn in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs in- flicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, neces- sity seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold ; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soid, if these were what he sought ! Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hill-side, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working had per- chance shown indications that encouraged him. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 159 " This man," said he, at one such moment, to him- Belf , " pure as they deem him, — all spiritual as he seems, — hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further in the direction of this vein ! " Then, after long search into the minister's dim in- terior, and turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of soids, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illu- minated by revelation, — all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker, — he would turn back discom'aged, and begin his quest towards another point. He groped along as stealth- ily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep, — or, it may be, broad awake, — with purjiose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. In spite of his pre- meditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak ; his garments would rustle ; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, woidd be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive ; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat ; his kind, watchfid, sym- pathizing, but never intrusive friend. Yet Mr. Dimmesdale woidd perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are Uabie, had not 160 THE SCARLET LETTER. rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no man as liis friend, he could not recognize his ene- my when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study ; or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency. One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he tallced with Roger Chil- lingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants. " Where," asked he, with a look askance at them, — for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he sel- dom, nowadays, looked straightforth at any object, whether human or inanimate, — " where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?" "Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them growing on a gi-ave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime." " Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, " he earnestly desired it, but could not." " And wherefore ? " rejoined the physician. " Where- fore not ; since all the powers of nature call so ear- nestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make mani- fest an unspoken crime ? " THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT, 161 " That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours," replied the minister. " There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, makuig itseK guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be re- vealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such mis- erable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy un- utterable.'* " Then why not reveal them here ? " asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. " Why sliould not the guilty ones sooner avail them- selves of this unutterable solace ? " " They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. " Many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful brethren ! even as in one who at last draws free air, after long stifling with his own pol- luted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why should VOL. V. 11 r 162 THE SCARLET LETTER. a wi-etclied man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it ! " " Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm physician. " True ; there are such men," answered Mr. Dim- mesdale. " But, uot to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very consti- tution of their nature. Or, — can we not suppose it ? — guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men ; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them ; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own imutterable torment, they go about among their fellow -creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they can- not rid themselves." "These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chil- lingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. " They fear to take up the shame that rightfully be- longs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's service, — these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their im clean hands ! If they would serve their fellow- men, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in eonsti-aining them to peniten- tial self-abasement I Wouldst thou have me to be- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 163 lieve, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better — can be more for God's glory, or man's wel- fare — than God's own truth ? Trust me, such men deceive themselves ! " " It may be so," said the yoimg clergyman, indiffer- ently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrel- evant or unreasonable. He had a ready faculty, in- deed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament. "But, now, I woidd ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine? " Before Roger Chilling-worth could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a yoimg child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent burial-groimd. Looking instinctively from the open ^\indow, — for it was sum- mer-time, — the minister beheld Hester Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sf)here of sympathy or human con- tact. She now skipj^ed irreverently from one grave to another ; imtil, coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy, — perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself, — she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Pearl paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she\ arrano;ed them along^ the lines of the scarlet letter that i decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered. Hester did not ] pluck them off. 104 THE SCARLET LETTER. Roger Chillingworth had by this time approachea the window, and smiled grimly down. " There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's composition," re- marked he, as much to himself as to his companion, " I saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor himseK with water, at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil ? Hath she affections ? Hath she any discoverable principle of being ? " " None, — save the freedom of a broken law," an- swered Mr. Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself. " Whether capable of good, I know not." The child probably overheard their voices ; for, look- ing up to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensi- tive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little hands in the most extravagant ecstasy. Hes- ter Pyrnne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up ; and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child laughed aloud ; and shouted, — " Come away, mother ! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you ! He hath got hold of the minister abeady. Come away, mother, or he will catch you ! But he cannot catch little Pearl ! " So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had notliing in com mon with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT, 165 afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be per- mitted to live her own life, and be a law unto lierseK, without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. " There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chilling- worth, after a pause, " who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast? " " I do verUy believe it," answered the clergjmaan. " Nevertheless I cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face, which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But stUl, metliinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart," There was another pause ; and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had gathered. " You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length, " my judgment as touching your health." " I did," answered the clergyman, " and would gladly learn it. Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death." " Freely, then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Dimmesdale, " the disorder is a strange one ; not so much in itseK, nor as outwardly manifested, — in so far, at least, as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good Sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect, now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and 1G6 THE SCARLET LETTER. watchful physician might well hope to cure you. But — I know not what to say — the disease is what 1 seem to know, yet know it not." " You speak in riddles, learned Sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window. " Then to speak more plainly," continued the phy- sician, " and I crave pardon. Sir, — should it seem to require pardon, — for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask, — as your friend, — as one hav- ing charge, imder Providence, of your life and phys- ical well-being, — hath all the operation of this disor- der been fairly laid open and recounted to me ? " "How can you qiiestion it?" asked the minister. " Surely, it were child's play to call in a physician, and then hide the sore ! " " You would tell me, then, that I know all ? " said Roger Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright wath intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. " Be it so ! But, again ! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a sjTnptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon, once again, good Sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You, Sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest con- joined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument." " Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his chair. " You deal not, I take it, in medicine for the soul ! " " Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an imaltered tone, without heeding the THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT, 167 interruption, — but standing up, and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure, — "a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit, hath imme- diately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil ? How may this be, unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?" _ " No ! — not to thee ! — not to an earthly physi- cian ! " cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turn- ing his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierce- ness, on old Roger Chilling-worth. " Not to thee ! But, if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit my- seK to the one Physician of the soul ! He, if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure ; or he can kill ! Let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in this matter ? — that dares thrust himseK between the suf- ferer and his God ? " With a fi'antic gesture he rushed out of the room. " It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister with a grave smile. " There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But see, now, how pas- sion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself ! As wath one passion, so with another I He hath done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart ! " It proved not difficult to reestablish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the dis- order of his nerves had hurried biVi into an unseemly 168 THE SCARLET LETTER. outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He mar- velled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the am- plest apologies, and besought his friend still to con- tinue the care, which, if not successful in restoring hun to health, had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister ; doing his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at the close of a professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold. " A rare_case ! " he muttered. " Ijnust needs look deeper into it A stranoe sympathy bptwivt .son] nnrl Jiody,! Were it only for the art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom ! " It came to pass, not long after the scene above re- corded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noon- day, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted re- THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT. 169 moteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself, that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment that, hitherto, had al- ways covered it even from the professional eye. Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred. After a brief pause, the physician turned away. But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and hor- ror ! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugli- ness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor ! Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious hmnan soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom. But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the trait of wonder in it ! XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. After the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though ex- ternally the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chil- Imgworth had now a sufficiently jjlain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himseK to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfor- tunate old man, which led him to imagine a more inti- mate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain ! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart woidd have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving ! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of ven- geance ! The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence — using the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, per- THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 171 chance, pardoning where it seemed most to punish — had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. It mat- tered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost soul, of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every move- ment. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony ? The victim was forever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine ; and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear ? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom, — uprose a thousand phantoms, — in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast ! All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect that the minister, though he had constantly a dim per- ception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully, — even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred, — at the deformed figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight ; a token implicitly to be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such dis- 172 THE SCARLET LETTER. trust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dinunesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presenti- ments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to Roger Chilling- worth, disregarded the lesson that he shoidd have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a mat- ter of principle, continued his habits of social familiar- ity with the old man, and thus gave him constant op- portimities for perfecting the purpose to which — poor, forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victim — the avenger had devoted himself. While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soid, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had acliieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual * gifts, liis moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. There were scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived ; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite un- derstanding ; which, duly mingled mth a fair proper- I THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 173 tion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly re- spectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flames ; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of address- ing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's na- tive language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought — had they ever dreamed of seeking — to ex- press the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt. Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of char- acter, naturally belonged. To the high mountain- peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. It kept him down, on a level with the lowest ; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have lis- tened to and answered I But this very burden it was that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrated in 174 THE SCARLET LETTER. unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Often est persuasive, but sometimes terrible ! The people knew not the power that moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a mii-acle of holi- ness. They fancied him the mouth-piece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very gi-oimd on which he trod was sanctified. The virgins of his church grew pale aroimd him, \ac- tims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagined it to be aU- religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most accejitable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirm- ity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children, that their old bones should be buried close to their yoimg pastor's holy grave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he ques- tioned with himseK whether the grass woidd ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried I ^ It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortiu-ed him ! It was his genuine impidse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow- like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. Then, what was he? — a substance? — or the dimmest of all shadows? He longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and teU the people what he was. " I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood, — I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face. heavenward, taking THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 175 upon myself to bold communion, in your behalf, witb tbe Most Higb Omniscience, — I, in wbose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enocb, — I, wbose foot- steps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my eartbly track, whereby tbe pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to tbe regions of tbe blest, — I, who have laid tbe band of baptism upon your children, — I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they bad quitted, — I, your pas- tor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie ! " More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps - until he shoidd have spoken words like the above. More than once, be bad cleared his throat, and drawn in tbe long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, woidd come burdened witb the black secret of bis soul. More than once — nay, more than a hundred times — he had actually spoken ! Spoken ! But how ? He had told his hearers that he was alto- gether vile, a viler companion of the \dlest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity ; and that tbe only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty ! Could there be plainer speech than this ? Woidd not tbe people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous im- pulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit, which he defiled ? Not so, indeed I They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self -condemning words. " Tbe godly youth ! " said they among themselves. " Tbe saint on earth ! Alas, if he discern such sin- r 176 THE SCARLET LETTER. f fulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold iu thine or mine ! " The minister well knew — subtle, but remorsefid hyiDocrite that he was ! — the light in which his vague confession would r be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon him- seK by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowl- edged shame, without the momentary relief of being self - deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self ! His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the church in which he had been bom and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Pm-itan divine had plied it on his own shoidders ; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more piti- lessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast, — not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees trem- bled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness ; sometimes with a glimmering lamp ; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light wliich he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortm-ed, but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. 177 seemed to flit before him ; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dinmess of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of dia- bolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale min- ister, and beckoned him away with them ; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow- laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his wliite-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turn= ing her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a moth- er, — thinnest fantasy of a mother, — methinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son ! And now, through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne, leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast. ^None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their na- ture, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and sub^ stance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. /To the untrue man, the whole uni- verse is false, — it is impalpable, — it shrinks to noth- ing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, VOL. V. 12 178 THE SCARLET LETTER. indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Diuimesdale a real existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissem- bled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gayety, there would have been no such man ! On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. A new thought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in it. Attir- ing hiniseK with as much care as if it had been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth. XII. THE minister's VIGIL. Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, Hester Prynne bad lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister went up the steps. It was an obscure night of early May. An imvaried pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while Hester Prynne sustained her punishment could now have been siunmoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform, nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark gray of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, imtil morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night-air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and ser- 180 THE SCARLET LETTER. mon. No eye could see him, save that ever -wake- ful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither ? Was it but the mockery of penitence ? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself ! A /mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while y fiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter ! He had been / driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man ! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with crime ? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good pur- pose, and fling it off at once ! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits coidd do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying ^ g^ilt and vain repentance. ) y^And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this / Tain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome / Adth a great horror of mind, as if the universe were / I gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right \A over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poi- sonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud ; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and re- verberated from the hills in the background ; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and ter- THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 181 ror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro. " It is done ! " muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. " The whole town will awake, and hurry forth, and find me here ! " But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually possessed. The town did not awake ; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches ; whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncov- ered his eyes and looked about him. At one of the chamber-windows of Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate himself, with a lamp in liis hand, a white nightcap on his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a ghost, evoked unseasonably from the grave. The cry had e\4dently startled him. At an- other window of the same house, moreover, appeared old Mistress Hibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a lamp, which, even thus far off, revealed the expres- sion of her sour and discontented face. She thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this vener- able witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night- hags, with whom she was well known to make excur- sions into the forest. Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, 182 THE SCARLET LETTER. tlie old latly quickly extinguished her own, and van- ished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness, — into which, nevertheless, he could see but little fur- ther than he might into a mill-stone, — retired from the window. The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soon greeted by a little, glimmering light, which, at first a long way off, was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of recognition on here a post, and there a garden-fence, and here a latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here, again, an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the doorstep. The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute jjar- ticiUars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard ; and that the gleam of the lan- tern would fall upon him, in a few moments more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman, — or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as well as higlily valued friend, — the Reverend Mr. Wilson ; who, as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of some dying man. And so he had. The good old min- ister came freshly from the death-chamber of Governor Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And now, surrounded, like the saint- like personages of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin, — as if the departed Governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 183 distant sliine of the celestial city, while looking thith- erward to see the triumphal pilgrim pass within its gates, — now, in short, good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern ! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above con- ceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, who smiled, — nay, almost laughed at them, — and then wondered if he were going mad. As the Eeverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaf- fold, closely muffling his Geneva cloak about liim with one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other, the minister coidd hardly restrain himself from speaking. " A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson ! Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me ! " Good heavens ! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spo- ken ? For one instant, he believed that these words had passed his lips. But they were uttered only within his imagination. The venerable Father Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety ; although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness. Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the hu- morous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the imaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the 184 THE SCARLET LETTER. scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there. The neighborhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely defined figure aloft on the place of shame ; and, half crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go, knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost — as he needs must think it — of some defunct transgressor. A dusky tu- mult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then — the morning light still waxing stronger — old patiiarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown,, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into pub- lic view, with the disorder of a nightmare in their as- pects. Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James's ruff fastened askew ; and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest cling- ing to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as hav- ing hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride ; and good Father Wilson, too, after spending half the night, at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, woidd come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms ; which now, by the by, in their hurry and confusion, they woidd scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, woidd come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror- stricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 185 brow ? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmes- dale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood ! Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. It was imme- diately responded to by a light, au-y, childish laugh, in which, with a thriU of the heart, — but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute, — he recognized the tones of little Pearl. " Pearl ! Little Pearl ! " cried he after a moment's pause ; then, suppressing his voice, — " Hester ! Hes- ter Prynne ! Are you there ? " " Yes ; it is Hester Prynne ! " she rej^lied, in a tone of surprise ; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the sidewalk, along which she had been passing. " It is I, and my little Pearl." " Whence come you, Hester ! " asked the minister. " What sent you hither ? " " I have been watching at a death-bed," answered Hester Prynne, — " at Governor Wiuthrop's death- bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling." " Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl," said the Keverend Mr. Dimmesdale. " Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand all three to- gether ! " She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying 186 THE SCARLET LETTER. through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half- torpid system. The three formed an electric chain. " Minister ! " whispered little Pearl. " What wouldst thou say, child ? " asked Mr. Dim- mesdale. ■■ " Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to- morrow noontide ? " inquired Pearl. " Nay ; not so, my little Pearl," answered the min- ister ; for with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him ; and he was already trembling at the conjimction in which — with a strange joy, nevertheless — he now found him- self. " Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee, one other day, but not to-mor- row." Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the minister held it fast. " A moment longer, my child ! " said he. " But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, " to take my hand and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide ? " " Not then, Pearl," said the minister, " but another time." " And what other time ? " persisted the child. " At the great judgment day," whispered the min- ister, — and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. " Then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting ! " Pearl laughed again. rBut before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 187 light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe, burn- ing out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmos- phere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thor- oughly illuminated the dense mediimi of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfvdness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an imaccustomed light. The wood- en houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gable- peaks ; the doorsteps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them ; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth ; the wheel-track, lit- tle worn, and, even in the market-place, margined with green on either side, — all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart ; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom : and little Pearl, herseK a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one an- other^ There was witchcraft in little PearFs eyes, and her face, as she glanced upward^ at the minister, wore that ^au^hty smile which made its expression frequently BO elfish. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmes- dale's, and pointed across the street. But he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes to- wards the zenith. 188 THE SCARLET LETTER. vNothing was more common, iii those days, than to intei'])ret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred with less regidarity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revela- tions from a supernatmal source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New Eng- land, from its settlement dowTi to Revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of this nature. Not sel- dom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, how- ever, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the col- ored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his imag- ination, and shaj)ed it more distinctly in his after- thought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these a^^'ful hieroglj^hics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expansive for Provi- dence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record ! In such a case, it could only be the sjTnptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his ego- tism over the whole expanse of nature, imtil the firma- ment itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soid's history and fatel^ THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 189 We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart, that the minister, looking up. ward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter, — the letter A, — marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud ; but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at least, with so little defi- niteness, that another's guilt might have seen another svmbol in \t.\ C^There waST^a singnilar circumstance that character- ized Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological state at this mo- ment. All the time that he gazed upward to the ze- nith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chil- lingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To his features, as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression ; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chilling- worth have passed -^dth them for the arch-fiend, stand- ing there with a smile and scowl to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if ^e street and all things else were at once annihilated.^ *' Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmes- 190 THE SCARLET LETTER. dale, overcome vdth terror. " I shiver at him ! Dost thou know the man ? I hate him, Hester ! " She remembered her oath, and was silent. " I tell thee, my soul shivers at him ! " muttered the minister again. " Who is he ? Who is he ? Canst thou do nothing for me ? I have a nameless horror of the man ! " " Minister," said little Pearl, " I can tell thee who he is ! " " Quickly, then, child ! " said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. " Quickly ! — and as low as thou canst whisper." Pearl mumbled something into his ear, that soimded, indeed, like hmnan language, but was only such gib- berish as children may be heard anuising themselves wath, by the hour together. At all events, if it in- volved any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilder- ment of his mind. The elfish child then laughed aloud. " Dost thou mock me now ? " said the minister. " Thou wast not bold ! — thou wast not true ! " — answered the child. " Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noon- tide ! " " Worthy Sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform. " Pious Master Dimmesdale, can this be you? Well, weU, indeed ! We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good Sir, and my dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home I " THE MINISTER'S VIGIL. 191 " How knewest thou that I was here ? " asked the minister, fearfully. " Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chil- lingworth, " I knew nothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor skill might to give him ease. He going home to a better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this strange light shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend Sir; else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha ! see now, how they trouble the brain, — these books ! — these books ! You should study less, good Sir, and take a little pastime ; or these night whimseys will grow upon you." " I will go home with you," said Mr. Dimmesdale. With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led away. The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heav- enly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, it is said more souls than one, were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. But, as he came down the pulpit steps, the gray-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove, which the minister recognized as his owti. " It was found," said the sexton, " this morning, on the scaffold . where evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. But, indeed, 192 THE SCARLET LETTER. he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it ! " " Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart ; for so confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary. " Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed ! " " And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your rever- ence must needs handle him without gloves, hence- forward," remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. Jut did your reverence hear of the portent that was last night ? — a great red letter in the sky, — the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there shoidd be some notice thereof ! " " No," answered the minister, " I had not heard of it'i> XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmes- dale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual fac- ulties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could read- ily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her whole soid was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to her, — the outcast woman, — for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, more- over, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little ac- customed, in her long seclusion from society, to meas- ure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard ex- ternal to herself, Hester saw — or seemed to see — that there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of human kind — links of flowers, or silk, or VOL. V. 13 194 THE SCARLET LETTER. gold, or whatever the material — had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester PrjTine. It is to the credit of human na- ture, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be trans- formed to love, unless the change be imj^eded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester PrjTine, there was neither irritation nor jrksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted, imcomplainingly, to its worst usage ; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered ; she did not weigh upon its sym- pathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in wliieh she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths. It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 195 forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges, — further than to breathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herseK by the faitliful labor of her hands, — she was quick to ac- knowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, when- ever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence stalked through the to"«Ti. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightfid inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble ; as if its gloomy twilight were a medimn in which she was entitled to hold in- tercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, wliile the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In siich emergencies, Hes- ter's nature showed itself warm and rich ; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was splf-nrrlainprl a-. Sistftv of Mercy ; or, wemay_rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looEed^lorw^d to thisj'esult. The letter was tlie sym- 196 THE SCARLET LETTER. bol of her callmg^ Such helpfulness was found in her, — so much power to do, and power tosympathize^ — that-many_peop"Ie3<^f " s^'^^^"~^Ptt^rpret--felffi scarlet- A by its original significatioa,_ They said that it meant AbleT~so"^rong~wasHester Prynne, with a woman's strength. It was^only the darkened_house that could contain her. When sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zeal- ously. Meeting them in^the street, jihe-jieYer-raised her head to receive their greetinga__ If they were resoss lute to~aCCosFlier, she laid her finger on the scarlet let- ter, and passed on.^ This^^nght_Jbe pride, Jjut^ like humilityT^hat it produced all the softening, influ- ence'of the latter quality on tliepiiblic mind. The public is despotic in its temper ; it is capable of deny; ^g common justice, when too strenuously^ demanded as- a right; but quite as frequently it awards^ more than justice^ when the appeal j£]made, as jdespots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne'sjleportment as an ajjpeal of this na- ture, society was inclmedTto sEowits former'victim a (Sor^ benign countenanceTIian~~sh'e cared To be fa- vbr^ with, or, perchance, t^an she deserv53r^ The rulers, and the wise and learnecTmen of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influ- ence of Hester's good qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the lat- ter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 197 wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty ; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. " Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. " It is our Hester, — the town's own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so helpfid to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, woidd constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it wovdd have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the ground. The effect of the symbol — or, rather, of the posi- tion in respect to society that was indicated by it — on the mind of Hester Prynne herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had 198 THE SCARLET LETTER. ^slie possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had under- gone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so comi)letely hidden by a cap, that not a sliining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon ; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statue-like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace ; nothing in Hester's bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived — ^ through, an experience of peculiar^yerity. j*' If she be^ /Hall tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the ten-| J derness ^vill either be crushed out of her, or — and / fhe'^outward semblance js the same — crushed scj ^ \ I "^deeply into her heart that it can never show itselri more^ Thelatter is perhaps the truest theory. She^ who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to eifect the transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever after- wards so touched, and so transfigured. Much o?~the marble coldness of Hester's impres- sion was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great measufe7~frDiir passion and U ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 199 feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world, — alone, as to any dejjendence on society, and with lit^,. tie Pearl to be guided and protected, — alone, and hopeless of^retriaYing,^^' pr>gifir>T7^^Pvpnhaf1 she not scorned to consider it desirable, — she cast awaythe___ fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no Taw for her"mind. It was an age in which the hu- man intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries be- fore. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthro\NTi and rearranged — not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode — the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancjent principle. Hester Prynne imbibed -^^-tSLi^"^^ this sj)irit. [She assumed a freedom of speculation, . ( then common enough on the other side of the At- lantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, C^riHUJ^XC would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stig- matized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cot- tage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect qui- etude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far oth- erwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Anne Hutchinson, as the 200 THE SCARLET LETTER. foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not improbably woiUd, have suffered death from the stern tribimals of the period, for attempting to under- mine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthu- siasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Pro\adence, in the person of this little girl, had as- signed to Hester's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had some- thing wrong in it, which continually betokmied that she had been born amiss, — the effluence of her moth- er's lawless passion, — and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all. Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual ex- istence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to specu- lation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suit- able position. Finally, all other difficulties being_ol> viated, woman cannot take advantage of these pre- ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. 201 liminary reforms, until she herself shall have under- gone a still mightier change ; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never over- comes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. K^her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish, ^hus, Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered "vsdthout a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind : now turned aside by an insur- mountable precipice ; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provideN The*^arlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her inter^dew \\ath the Reverend Mr. Dinmiesdale, on the night of liis vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that aj)peared worthy of any exertion and sac- rifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the in- tense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering mth the delicate springs of Mr. Dim- ^202 THE SCARLET LETTER. mesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself, I whether there had not originally been a defect of I truth, courage, and loyalty, on her own part, in allow- ing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothing au- spicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact, that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing; him from a blacker ruin than had over- whelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger Chil- lingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far as it might yet be possible. Strengihened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened by the ignominy, that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himseK nearer to her level, or per- haps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former ^ husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of loots and herbs to con- coct his medicines withal. XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. Hester bade little Pearl run dowii to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea- weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet, went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, and peejied curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an eK-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid, whom Pearl, having no other plajTnate, in\dted to take her hand, and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say, — " This is a better place ! Come thou into the pool ! " And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom ; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water. Meanwliile her mother had accosted the physician. " I would speak a word with you," said she, — "a word that concerns us much." " Aha ! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old Roger Chillingworth ? " answered he, raising himseK from his stooping posture. " With all my heart ! Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of you on 204 THE SCARLET LETTER. all hands ! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magis- trate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was debated whether or no, with safety to the com- mon \yeal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken ojEf your bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forth- with!" " It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this badge," calmly rej)lied Hester. " Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different_purport."_ " Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he. "A woman must needs follow her o\mi fancy, touching the adornment of her person. The letter is gayly embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom ! " All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder- smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older ; for though the traces of advancing life were visible, he wore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile ; but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so de- risively, that the spectator could see his blackness all HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 205 the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes ; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual puff of pas- sion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's facidty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This imhappy person had effected such a transformation, by devoting himseK, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over. The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her. " What see you in my face," asked the physician, " that you look at it so earnestly ? " " Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. " But let it pass ! It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak," " And what of him ? " cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. " Not to hide the truth, Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely, and I will make answer." " When we last spake together," said Hester, " now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a prom- 20G THE SCARLET LETTER. ise of secrecy, as toucliing the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yon- der man were in your hands, there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent, in accordance with your be- hest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself ; for, having cast off all duty to- wards other human beings, there remained a duty to- wards him ; and somethmg whispered me that I was betraying it, in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day, no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search liis thoughts. You bui'row and rankle in his heart ! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death ; and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I have sm'ely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true ! " " What choice had you ? " asked Roger Chilling- worth. " My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his puljjit into a dungeon, — thence, peradventure, to the gallows ! " "It Ead been better so ! " said Hester Prynne. " What evil have I done the man ? " asked Ro^er Chillingworth again. " I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for ray aid, his life woidd have burned away in torments, within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret ! But enough ! What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and creeps about on earth, is owing all to me 1 " HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 207 " Better he had died at once ! " said Hester Prynne. " Yea, woman, thou sayest truly I " cried old Roger Chilling worth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. " Better had he died at once ! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy ! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwell- ing always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spii'itual sense, — for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this, — he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, wliich sought only evil, and f ovmd it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon ; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my joresence ! — the closest pr oping uity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged ! — and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge ! Yea, indeed ! — he did not err ! — there was a fiend at his elbow ! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment ! " The tmfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightfid shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments — which some- times occur only at the interval of years — when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now. 208 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Hast thou not tortured him enough ? " said Hester, noticing the old man's look. " Has he not paid thee all?" - " No ! — no ! He has but increased the debt ! " an- / swered the physician ; and as he proceeded, his man- ' ner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. " Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine years agone ? Even then, I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other, — faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine ; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtfid for others, craving lit- tle for himself, — kind, true, just, and of constant, if not warm affections ? Was I not all this ? " " All this, and more," said Hester. " And what am I now ? " demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil %vithin him to be written on his features. " I have already told thee what I am ! A fiend ! Who made me so ? " " It was myself ! " cried Hester, shuddering. " It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me ? " " I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger ChiUingworth. " If that have not avenged me, I can do no more ! " He laid his finger on it, with a smile. " It has avenged thee ! " answered Hester Prynne. " I judged no less," said the physician. " And now, what wouldst thou with me touching this man ? " HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN. 209 " I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. " He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as con« cerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy hands. Nor do I, — whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, entering into the soul, — nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt ! There is no good for him, — no good for me, — no good for thee ! There is no good for little Pearl ! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze ! " " Woman, I coidd wellnigh pity thee ! " said Roger Chilluigworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too ; for there was a quality almost majestic in the de- spair which she expressed. " Thou hadst great ele- ments. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy na- ture!" " And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, " for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend ! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human ? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own ! Forgive, and leave his further retri- bution to the Power that claims it ! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not VOL. V. 14 210 THE SCARLET LETTER. BO ! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only priv- ilege ? \\'ilt thou reject that pi'iceless benefit? " " Peace, Hester, peace ! " replied the old man, with gloomy sternness. " It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou teUest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step a\vi'y thou didst plant the germ of evil ; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion ; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may ! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt vAi\\ yonder man." He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs. XV. HESTER AND PEAEL. So Roger ChiUingwortli — a deformed old figure, with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked — took leave of Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and there an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the ground, as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of liis footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were, which the old man was so sedulous^ to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch ? Did the sun, whicE~sEone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity, whichever way he turned himself ? And whither was he now going ? Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly 212 THE SCARLET LETTER. nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven ? " Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as she stiU gazed after him, " I hate the man ! " ShcN^upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days, in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study, and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nujitial smile. He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy ; but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subse- quent life, they classed themselves among her ugli- est remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have been ! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him ! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of that she had ever endured, and reciprocated, the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth, than any which had since been done him, that, in the tune when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. "Yes, I hate him ! " repeated Hester, more bitterly than before. " He betrayed me ! He has done me worse wrong than I did him ! " [ Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless I HESTER AND PEARL. 213 they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart ! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble im- age of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken ? Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of misery, and wrought out no repentance ? Thpi p.mnti'ons of that-Jhriaf-spaee^-while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Cliilliiig;^ worth, threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind^ revealinsf much that she might not otherwise have ac- _knowledged to herseK. He being gone, she summoned back her child. " Pearl ! Little Pearl ! Where are you ? " Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and — as it declined to venture — seeking a passage for her- seK into its sphere of impalpable earth and imattain- able sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New England ; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sim. Then she 214 THE SCARLET LETTER. took Tip the white foam, that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scam« pering after it, with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea- fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird, with a white breast, Pearl was abnost sure, had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport ; because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the searbreeze, or as wild as Pearl herself. Her final emjoloyment was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds, and make herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devis- ing drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb. Pearl took some eel-grass, and imi- tated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the deco- ration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter, — the letter A, — but freshly green, instead of scarlet ! The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest ; even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden imjDort. " I wonder if mother will ask me what it means I " thought Pearl. Just then, she heard her mother's voice, and flitting along as lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Hester Prynne, dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom. "My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's HESTER AND PEARL. 215 silence, " the green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. But dost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother is doomed to wear ? " " Yes, mother," said the child. " It is the great letter A. Thou hast taught me in the horn-book." Hester looked steadily into her little face ; but, though there was that singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point. " Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter ? " " Truly do I ! " answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's face. " It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart ! " " And what reason is that ? " asked Hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's obser- vation ; but, on second thoughts, turning pale. " What has the letter to do with any heart, save mine ? " " Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously than she was wont to speak. " Ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking with ! It may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet letter mean ? — and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom ? — and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart ? " She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was sel- dom seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought occurred to Hester that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she 216 THE SCAB LET LETTER. Imew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Pearl in an vmwontecl aspect. Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waj'^^ardness of an April breeze ; which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom ; in requital of which misdemeanors, it will sometimes, of its own vague pur- pose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tender- ness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleas- ure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a moth- er's estimate of the child's disposition. Any other ob- server might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker coloring. But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could be made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as coidd be imparted, without irrev- erence either to the parent or the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerg- ing — and coidd have been, from the very first — the steadfast principles of an imflinching courage, — an uncontrollable will, — a sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect, — and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child. I HESTER AND PEARL. 217 Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of tlie scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her be- ing. From the earliest ejDoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her aj^pointed mission. Hes- ter had often fancied that Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in eudowdng the child with this marked propensity ; but never, imtil now, had she be- thought herself to ask, whether, linked with that de- sign, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. If little Pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb ? — and to help her to overcome the passion, once so w^ild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart ? Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this while holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once, and again, and still a third time. " What does the letter mean, mother ? — and why dost thou wear it ? — and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart ? " •' What shall I say ? " thought Hester to herself. *' No ! If this be the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it." Then she sjioke aloud. " Silly Pearl," said she, " what questions are these ? There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of the minister's heart ? 218 THE SCARLET LETTER. And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of its gold-thread." In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talisman of a stern and se- vere, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her ; as recognizing that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face. But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or three times, as her mother and she went home- ward, and as often at supper-tune, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly asleep. Pearl looked up, with mischief gleam- ing in her black eyes. " Mother," said she, " what does the scarlet letter mean ? " And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other inquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations about the scarlet letter, — " Mother ! — Mother ! — Why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?" "Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. " Do not tease me, else I shall shut thee into the dark closet ! " XVI. A FOREST WALK. Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true char- acter of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For several days, however, she vainly sought an op- portunity of addressing him in some of the medita- tive walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking, along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she vis- ited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her con- scious heart imputed suspicion where none covdd have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together, — for all these reasons, Hester never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky. At last, while attending in a sick-chamber, whither the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had been siunmoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian 220 THE SCARLET LETTER. converts. lie would probably return, by a certain hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, there- fore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl, — who was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expedi- tions, however inconvenient her presence, — and set forth. The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilder- ness in which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray ex- panse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze ; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extrem- ity of some long vista through the forest. The spor- tive sunlight — feebly sjjortive, at best, in the predom- inant pensiveness of the day and scene — withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright. " Mother," said little Pearl, " the sunshine does not love you. It rims away and hides itself, because it is afraid of somethmg on your bosom. Now see ! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!" " Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Hester. "And why not, mother?" asked Pearl, stopping I A FOREST WALK. 221 short, just at the beginning of her race. " Will not it come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown ? " " Run away, child," answered her mother, " and catch the sunshine ! It will soon be gone." Pearl set forth, at a great pace, and, as Hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with the vivacity ex- cited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic cii-cle too. " It will go now," said Pearl, shaking her head. " See ! " answered Hester, smiling. " Now I can stretch out my hand, and grasp some of it." As she attemj)ted to do so, the sunshine vanished ; or, to judge from the bright expression that was dan- cing on Pearl's features, her mother could have fan- cied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor in Pearl's nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits ; she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all chil- dren, in these latter days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with which Hester had fought against her sorrows be- fore Pearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's char- acter. She wanted — what some people want through- out life — a grief that shoidd deeply touch her, and thus hmnanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little Pearl. 222 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Come, my child ! " said Hester, looking about her from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sim- shine. " We will sit down a little way \\dthiu the wood, and rest ourselves." " I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. " But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile." " A story, child ! " said Hester. " And about what?" " Oh, a story about the Black Man," answered Pearl, taking hold of her mother's go^\^l, and looldng up, half earnestly, haK mischievously, into her face. " How he haimts this forest, and carries a book with him, — a big, heavy book, with iron clasps ; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to every- body that meets liim here among the trees ; and they are to write their names with their o^vn blood. And then he sets his mark on their bosoms ! Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother ? " " And who told you this story. Pearl ? " asked her mother, recognizing a common superstition of the pe- riod. "It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where you watched last night," said the child. " But she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand peojjle had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. And that ugly-tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother ? And dost thou go to meet him in the night-time?" A FOREST WALK. 223 " Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone ? " asked Hester. " Not that I remember," said the child. " If thou fearest to leave me in oui* cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would very gladly go I But, mother, tell me now ! Is there such a Black Man ? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?" " Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I .once tell thee ? " asked her mother. " Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered Pearl. " Once in my life I met the Black Man ! " said her mother. " This scarlet letter is his mark ! " Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss, which, at some epoch of the preceding centiuy, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the dark- some shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowTied leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked up the current and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points ', while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel- way of pebbles, and bro^vn sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and imder- brush, and here and there a huge rock covered oyer 224 THE SCARLET LETTER. with gray lichens. All these giant trees and bowlders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook ; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it shoidd whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mir- ror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue. " O brook ! O foolish and tiresome little brook ! " cried Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk. " Why art thou so sad ? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sigliing and murmuring ! " But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course. " What does this sad little brook say, mother ? " in- quired she. "If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might teU thee of it," answered her mother, " even as it is telling me of mine ! But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake thyself to i)lay, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder." A FOREST WALK. 225 "Is it the Black Man ? " asked Pearl. " Wilt thou go and play, child ? " repeated her mother. " But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first call." " Yes, mother," answered Pearl. " But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his arm ? " " Go, silly child ! " said her mother, impatiently. "It is no Black Man ! Thou canst see him now, throuoh the trees. It is the minister ! " " And so it is ! " said the child. " And, mother, he has his hand over his heart ! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place ? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother ? " " Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time," cried Hester Prynne. " But do not stray far. Keep where thou canst hear the babble of the brook." The child went singing away, following up the cur- rent of the brook, and striving to mingle a more light- some cadence with its melancholy voice. Biit the little stream woidd not be comforted, and still kept telling its imintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened — or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen — within the verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet colmnbines that she foimd growing in the crevices of a high rock. When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two towards the track that led through VOL. V. 15 226 THE SCARLET LETTER. the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor m any other sit- uation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in the intense seclusion of the forest, which, of itself, would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait ; as if he saw no reason for takmg one step farther, nor felt any desire to do so, but woidd have been glad, covdd he be glad of anything, to fling himseK down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive, for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accvmiulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided. To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale ex- hibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffer- ing, except that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart. XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. Slowly as the minister walked, he had ahnost gone by, before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At length, she succeeded. " Arthur Dimmesdale ! " she said, faintly at first ; then louder, but hoarsely. " Arthur Dimmesdale ! " " Who speaks ? " answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that his path- way through life was haimted thus, by a spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts. He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet letter. " Hester ! Hester Prynne ! " said he. " Is it thou ? Art thou in life ? " " Even so ! " she answered. " In such life as has been mine these seven years past ! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live ? " It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted 228 THE SCARLET LETTER. of their own. So strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who had been inti- mately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering, in mutual dread ; as not yet famil- iar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost ! They were awe-stricken lilcewisc at themselves ; because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its his- tory and experience, as life never does, except at such breatliless epochs. The soid beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant ne- cessity, that Arthm* Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt them- selves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere. Without a word more spoken, — neither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an imexpressed con- sent, — they glided back into the shadow of the woods, whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they found voice to s^Deak, it was, at first, only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two ac- quaintance might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before, and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoujihts mio:ht be led across the threshold. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 229 After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester Prynne's. " Hester," said he, " hast thou found peace ? " She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. " Hast thou ? " she asked. " None ! — nothing but despair ! " he answered. '' What else could I look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine ? Were I an atheist, — a man devoid of conscience, — a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts, — I might have foimd peace, long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it ! But, as mat- ters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual tor- ment. Hester, I am most miserable I " " The people reverence thee," said Hester. " And • surely thou workest good among them ! Doth this bring thee no comfort ? " _4' More misery, Hester ! — only the more misery ! " answered the clergyman, with a bitter smile. "As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the re- demption of other souls ? — or a polluted soul towards their piurification ? And as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred ! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned up- ward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beam- ing from it ! — must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost \ were speaking ! — and then look inward, and discern \ the black reality of what they idolize ? I have laughed, 1 in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast be- ./^ J" / - 230 THE SCARLET LETTER. tween what I seem and what I am I And Satan laughs at it ! " " You wrong yourself in this," said Hester, gently. " You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works ? And wherefore should it not bring you peace ? " " No, Hester, no ! " replied the clergyman. " There is no substance in it ! It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me ! Of penance, I have had enough ! Of penitence, there has been none ! Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holi- ness, and have shown myself to, mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. _Haj)py_are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter oj)enly upon your bosom ! Mine burns in secret ! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, -tollQckJnto an eye that recognizes me for what I am ! Had I one friend — or were it my worst enemy ! — to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me ! But, now, it is all falsehood ! — all empti- ness ! — all death ! " Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears, and spoke. " Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 231 said she, " with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it ! " — Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort, — " Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof ! " The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and chitching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom. " Ha! What sayest thou ! " cried he. " An enemy I And under mine own roof ! What mean you ? " Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration ; or, per- hapsTin the misanthropy of her own ti'ouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards hirn^ had been both joftened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chilling worth, — the secret poison of his .malignity, infecting all the air al)ouf~~him^ — and his authorized interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities, — that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by whole- 232 THE SCARLET LETTER, some pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual 't>eing. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be in- sanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good and TruCj ^f which madness is perhaps the earthly type. Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once, — nay, why should we not speak it ? — still so passionately loved ! Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had ah'eady told Koger Chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she woiUd gladly have lain down on the forest-leaves, and died, there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet. " O Arthur," cried she, " forgive me ! In all things else, I have striven to be true ! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity ; save when thy good, — thy life, — thy fame, — were put in question ! Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side ! Dost thou not see what I would say ? That old man ! — the physician ! — he whom they call Roger Chilling- worth ! — he was my husband ! " The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which — intermixed, in more shapes than one, with his higher, purer, softer quah- ties — was, in fact, the portion of him which the Devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his char^ acter had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 233 even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands. " I might have known it," murmured he. " I did know it ! Was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart, at the first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since ? Why did I not un- derstand ? O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing ! And the shame ! — the indelicacy ! — the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it ! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this ! I cannot forgive thee ! " " Thou shalt forgive me ! " cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. " Let God punish ! Thou shalt forgive ! " With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her bosom; little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He woidd have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her, — for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman, — and stUl she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Hes- ter could not bear and live ! " Wilt thou yet forgive me ! " she repeated, over and over again. " Wilt thou not frown ? WUt thou forgive ? " " I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister, at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sad- 234 THE SCARLET LETTER. ness, but no anger. " I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both ! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest ! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has \aolatedj in_cold bloody the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so ! " " Never, never ! " whispered she. " What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so ! We said so to each other ! Hast thou forgotten it ? " " Hush, Hester ! " said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground. " No ; I have not forgotten ! " They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomier hour ; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tend- ing, and darkening ever, as it stole along; and yet it enclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads ; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to an- other, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come. And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the for- est-track that led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name ! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not bum into the bosom of the fallen woman ! Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 235 Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment, true ! He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him. " Hester," cried he, " here is a new horror ! Roger Chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course of his revenge ? " " There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester, thoughtfully ; " and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will doubt- less seek other means of satiating his dark passion." "And I ! — how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy ? " exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart, — a gesture that had grown involuntary with him. " Think for me, Hester ! Thou art strong. Resolve for me ! " " Thou must dwell no longer with this man," said Hes-ter, slowly and firmly. " Thy heart must be no longer under Ms evil eye ! " " It were far worse than death! " replied the minis- ter. " But how to avoid it ? What choice remains to me ? Shall I lie down again on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? Must I sink do\s'n there, and die at once ? " " Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee ! " said Hes- ter, with the tears fishing into her eyes. " Wilt thou die for very weakness ? There is no other cause ! " "The judgment of God is on me," answered the conscience-stricken priest. " It is too mighty for me to struggle with I " 236 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it." " Be thou strong for me ! " answered he. " Advise me what to do." "Is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister's, and in- stinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold it. self erect. " Doth the universe lie within the compass" of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf -strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder forest -track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest ! Yes ; but onward, too. Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step, until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread. There thou art free ! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy ! Is there not shade enough in all this bomidless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of Roger Chillingworth ? " " Yes, Hester ; but only under the fallen leaves ! " replied the minister, with a sad smile. " Then there is the broad pathway of the sea ! " con- tinued Hester. " It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural village or in vast London, — or, surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant Italy, — thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge ! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions ? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already ! " THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER. 237 " It cannot be ! " answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realize a dream. " I am pow- erless to go ! Wretched and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly ex- istence in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other human souls ! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an end ! " _ " Thou art crushed imder this seven years' weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. " But thou shalt leave it all behind thee ! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path ; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath hap- pened. Meddle no more with it ! Begin all anew ! i Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this '• one trial ? Not so ! The future is yet full of trial i and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed ! There is good to be done ! Exchange this false life of ; thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to ' such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, — as is more thy nature, — be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and most renowned of the cul- tivated world. Preach ! Write ! Act ! Do any- thing, save to lie down and die ! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life ! — that have made thee feeble to will and to do ! — that will leave thee powerless even to repent I | Up, and away ! " 238 THE SCARLET LETTER. " O Hester ! " cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, " thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here ! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone ! " It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach. He repeated the word. " Alone, Hester ! " " Thou shalt not go alone ! " ansv/ered she, in a deep whisper. Then, aU was spoken 1 XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at but dared not speak. But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely es- tranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was alto- gether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without ride or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed for- est, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate, ^er intel- lect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the ^^) Indian in his woods. For years past she looked from this - estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; crit- icising all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The i tendency of her fate and fortimes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, De- spair, Solitude ! These had been her teachers, — stern 240 THE SCARLET LETTER. and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss/j The minister, on tl^ other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws ; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that wTctched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts, — for those it was easy to arrange, — but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood., he was only the more trammelled by its regailations, its principles, and even its prejodrces. As a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed woimd, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all. Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and igno- miny had been little other than a preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale ! Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime ? None ; unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken do^vn by long and ex- quisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it ; that between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance ; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy ; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his I A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 241 dreary and desert patb, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded ; so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph. The struggle, if it were one, need not be described. Let it suffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone. " If, in all these past seven years," thought he, " I could recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure for the sake of that earnest of Heaven's mer- cy. But now, — since I am irrevocably doomed, — wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution ? Or, if this be the path to a better life, as Hester would per- suade me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pur- suing it ! Neither can I any longer live without her companionship ; so powerful is she to sustain, — so tender to soothe ! O Thou to whom I dare not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me ! " " Thou wilt go ! " said Hester, calmly, as he met her glance. The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoy- ment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the exhilarating effect — upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own VOL. V. 16 242 THE SCARLET LETTER. heart — of breatliing the wild, free atmosphere of an viuredeenied, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinfje of the devotional in liis mood. " Do I feel joy again ? " cried he, wondering at himself. " Methought the germ of it was dead m me ! O Hester, thou art my better angel ! I seem to have flung myself — sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened — down upon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful ! This is already the better life ! Why did we not find it sooner ? " " Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. " The past is gone ! Wherefore should we linger upon it now ? See ! With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never been ! " So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. The mys- tic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. With a hand's -breadth farther flight it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligi- ble tale which it still kept murmuring about. But there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable mis- fortune. The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 243 from her spirit. Oh exquisite relief ! She had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom ! By an- other impulse, she took off the formal cap that con- fined her hair ; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her featiu-es. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of woman- hood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered them- selves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleam- ing adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy. Sueh was the sympathy of Nature — that wild, heaven Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth — with the bliss of these two spirits ! Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slmnbeK, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. Had the 244 THE SCARLET LETTER. forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright iu Hester's eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimniesdale's ! Hester looked at liim with the thrill of another joy. " Thou must know Pearl ! " said she. " Our little Pearl ! Thou hast seen her, — yes, I know it ! — but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She is a strange child ! I hardly comprehend her ! But thou wilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal vfith. her." "Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me ? " asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. " I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust, — a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl ! " " Ah, that was sad ! " answered the mother. " But she will love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her! Pearl! Pearl!" " I see the child," observed the minister. '' Yonder she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child ^\ill love me? " Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible, at some distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright - apparelled vision, in a sunbeam, which feU down upon her through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinct, — now like a real child, now like a child's spirit, — as the splendor went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest. Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, whUe her mother sat talking mth the clergyman. The great black forest — stern as it showed itself to those who brought the sruLlt and troubles of the world into A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE. 245 its bosom — became tbe playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. FSombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autimin, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leavesTj These Pearl gathered, and was pleased with their wdld flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threaten- ingly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment, — for a squir- rel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods, — so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked in- quisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were bet- ter to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A woK, it is said, — but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable, — came up, and smelt of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nour- ished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child. And she was gentler here than in the grassy-mar- gined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cot- tage. The flowers appeared to know it ; and one and 246 THE SCARLET LETTER. another whispered as she passed, " Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me ! " — and, to please them. Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and colimibines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her ej^es. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a nymph-cliild, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back. Slowly ; for she saw the clergymaiL XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. "Thou wilt love her clearly," repeated Hester Prynne, as she and the minister sat watching little Pearl. " Dost thou not think her beautiful ? And see with what natural skill she has made those sim- ple flowers adorn her ! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies, in the wood, they could not have become her better. She is a splendid child ! But I know whose brow she has ! " " Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmes- dale, with an unquiet smile, " that this dear child, trip- ping about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm ? Methought — O Hester, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it ! — that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so strik- ingly that the world might see them ! But she is mostly thine ! " " No, no ! Not mostly ! " answered the mother, with a tender smile. " A little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks, with those wild-flowers in her hair ! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in our dear old England, had decked her out to meet us." It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advance. In her was visible the tie that united 248 THE SCARLET LETTER. them. She had been ofifered to the world, these seven years past, as the living hieroglypliic, in which was re- vealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide, — all wi'itten in this symbol, — all plainly manifest, — had there been a prophet ox. magician skilled to read the character of flame ! rAnd Pearl was the oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined, when they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together ?|[Thoughts like these — and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or define — threw an awe about the child as she came onward. " Let her see nothing strange — no passion nor eagerness — in thy way of accosting her," whispered Hester. " Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially she is seldom tolerant of emo- tion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections I She loves me, and will love thee ! " " Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at Hester Piynne, " how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it ! But, in truth, as I al- ready told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile ; but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me ! The first time, — thou knowest it well ! The last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house of yonder stem old Governor." "And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 249 and mine ! " answered the mother. " I remember it ; and so shall little Pearl. Fear nothing ! She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee ! " By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree -trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant pictur- esqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest-gloom ; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another child, — another and the same, — with like- wise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herseK, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl ; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return to it. There was both truth and error in the impression ; the child and mother were estranged, but through Hester's fault, not Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted with- in the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wan- 250 THE SCARLET LETTER. derer, coiild not find licr wonted place, and hardly laiew where she was. " I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, 'vthat this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. J Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a run- ning stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has al- ready imparted a tremor to my nerves." " Come, dearest child ! " said Hester, encouragingly, and stretching out both her arms. " How slow thou art ! When hast thou been so sluggish before now ? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love, henceforward, as thy mother alone could give thee ! Leap across the brook, and come to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer!" Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed her bright, wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance ; as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmes- dale felt the child's eyes upon liimself, his hand — with that gesture so habitual as to have become in- voluntary— stole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of authority. Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and point- ing evidently towards her mother's breast. And be- neath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower- girdled and sunny image of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too. " Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me ? " exclaimed Hester. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 251 Pearl still pointed with her forefinger ; and a frown gathered on her brow ; the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-lUce aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of un- accustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious ges- ture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl. " Hasten, Pearl ; or I shall be angry with thee ! " cried Hester Prynne, who, however inured to such behavior on the elf-child's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. " Leap across the brook, naughty child, and run hither ! Else I must come to thee ! " But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more than _mollified by her entreaties, now sud- denly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently and throwing her small figure into the most extrava- gant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides ; so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden mid- titude were lending her their sympathy and encour- agement. Seen in the brook, once more, was the shad- owy wrath of Pearl's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small fore- finger at Hester's bosom ! " I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and annoyance. " Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed 252 THE SCARLET LETTER. aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has always seen me wear ! " *' I pray you," answered the minister, " if thou hast any means of pacifjdng the cliild, do it forthwith ! Save it v/ere the cankered wrath of an old \^^tch, like Mistress Hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, "I know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty, as in the wrinkled \vitch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify her, if thou lovest me ! " Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergj^man, and then a heavy sigh ; while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor. "Pearl," said she, sadly, "look down at thy feet! There ! — before thee ! — on the hither side of the brook ! " The child turned her eyes to the point indicated ; and there lay the scarlet letter, so close upon the margin of the stream, that the gold embroidery was reflected in it. " Bring it hither ! " said Hester. " Come thou and take it up I " answered Pearl. " Was ever such a child ! " observed Hester, aside to the minister. " Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little longer, — only a few days longer, — until we shall have left this region and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it ! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up forever ! " With these words, she advanced to the margin of THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 253 the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her, as she thus received back this deadly sj-mbol from the hand of fate. She had flimg it into infinite space ! — she had drawn an hour's free breath ! — and here again was the scarlet misery, glittering on the old spot ! So it ever is, whether thus tj^oified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine ; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her. When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to Pearl. " Dost thou know thy mother now, chUd ? " asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. " Wilt thou come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon her, — now that she is sad?" " Yes ; now I will ! " answered the chUd, bounding across the brook, and clasping Hester in her arms. " Now thou art my mother indeed ! And I am thy little Pearl!" In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks. But then — by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy what- ever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish — Pearl put up her mouth, and kissed the scarlet letter too ! 254 THE SCARLET LETTER. " That was not kind ! " said Hester. " When thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me ! " " AVhy dotli the minister sit yonder ?" asked Pearl. " He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. " Come thou, and entreat his blessing ! He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves thy mother too. Wilt thou not love him ? Come ! he longs to greet thee ! " " Doth he love us ? " said Pearl, looking up, with acute intelligence, into her mother's face. " Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?" "Not now, my dear child," answered Hester. " But in days to come, he will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside of our own ; and thou shalt sit upon his knee ; and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him ; wilt thou not ? " "And will he always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired Pearl. " Foolish child, what a question is that ! " exclaimed her mother. " Come and ask his blessing ! " But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every ^etted^ child towards a danger- ous rival, or from w'hatever caprice of her freakish nature. Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces ; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister — painf idly embar- rassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards — bent THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE. 255 forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the imwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergyman ; while they talked together, and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position, and the purposes soon to be fulfilled. And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, wath their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mor- tal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there was Pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook, — now that the intrusive third person was gone, — and taking her old place by her mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed ! / In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had sketched for their departure.J It had been deter- mined between them that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, oifered them a more eligible shel- ter and concealment than the vnlds of New England, or all America, with its alternatives of an Indian wig- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 257 warn, or the few settlements of Europeans, scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not to speak of the cler- gyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of charac- ter. This vessel had recently arrived from the Span- ish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail for Bristol. Hester Prynne — whose vocation, as a self -en- listed Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew — coidd take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child, with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable. ^-The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the j)recise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present. " That is most fortu- nate ! " he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very for- tunate, we hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless, — to hold nothing back from the reader, — it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon ; and as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergy- man, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. ^At least, they shall say of me,'' thought this exem- VOL. V. 17 ^-> 258 THE SCARLET LETTER. plaiy man, " that I leave no public duty unperformed, _noi' ill 2)erformed I " ^Sad, indeed, that an introspec- tion so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived !/ We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him ; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak ; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himseK, and another to the multi- tude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. ] The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdalc's feelings, as he returned from his interview with Hester, lent him un- accustomed physical energy, and hurried him town- ward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural ob- stacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track^A\dth an unweariable acti^^ty that aston- ished him. ^ He could not but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath, he ha(^ toiled over the same ground, only two days before. /As he drew near the touTi, he took an impression or change from the series of familiar objects that presented them- selves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due midtitude of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memoi-y sug- THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 259 gested one. Not the less, however, came this importu- nately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked neither older nor younger now ; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day ; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently be- stowed a parting glance ; and yet the minister's deep- est sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably, as he passed imder the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas ; either that he had seen it only in a dream hith- erto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now. This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it as- sumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the famil- iar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will, and Hester's wiU, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore ; but the same minister retiuned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him, — • " I am not the man for whom you take me ! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook ! Go seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment ! " His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with 260 THE SCARLET LETTER. him, — " Thou art thyself the man ! " — but the error would have been their own, not his. Before Mr. Dimmesclale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the im- pulses now communicated to the unfortunate and star- tled minister. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional ; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriar- chal privilege, wliich his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled him to use ; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and re- spect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a conversation of some two or three mo- ments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent andJioaryJbearded deacon, it was only by the most carefid self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, In utterance of these hor- rible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And, even with THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 261 this terror in Ins heart, he could hardly avoid laugh- ing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's impiety ! Again, another incident of the same naturCc Hurry- ing along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his chiu-ch ; a most pious and exemplary old dame ; poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied grave- stones. Yet all this, which woidd else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her de- vout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And, since Mr. Dimmes- dale had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief eartlily comfort — which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all — was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from liis beloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, imanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The in- stilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, the minister could never after- wards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate dis- 262 THE SCARLET LETTER. order in his utterance, which failed to impart any dis- tinct idea to the good widow's comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a method of its own. As- suredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an ex- pression of divine gi'atitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale. Again a third instance. After parting from the old church-member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly won — and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sab- bath after his vigil — to barter the transitory pleas- ures of the world for the heavenly hope, that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark aroimd her, and which .would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanc- tity of her heartTwlnch hung its snowy curtains about Lis image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or — shall we not rather say? — this lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch- fiend whispered him to condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this %argin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. So — with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained — he held his Geneva cloak before his THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 263 face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recogni- tion, and leaving the young sister to digest his rude- ness as she might. She ransacked her conscience, — which was full of harmless little matters, lilie her pocket or her work-bag, — and took herself to task, poor thing ! for a thousand imaginary faults ; and went about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning. Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was, — we blush to tell it, — it was jto_stop_short in the road, andteach some very wicked words to a knot of littte'T'uritan children who were playing there, and had buF~just begun to talk. Uenying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken sea- man, one of the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round* solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths ! It was not so much a better principle as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of cler- ical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter crisis. " What is it that haunts and tempts me thus ? " cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand against liis forehead. ^XAm I mad ? or am I given over utterly to the fiend ? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood ? And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every 264 THE SCARLET LETTER. wickedness wMeh his most foul imagination can con- ceive ? " At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmes- dale thus commimed with liimself, and struck his fore- head with hisTiand, old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witeh-lady, is said to have been passing by. She made a very grand appearance ; having on a high head- dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which Ann Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Over- bury' s murder. Whether the witch had read the min- ister's thoughts or no, she came to a fidl stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and — though little given to converse with clergymen — began a con- versation. " So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed the witch -lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. " The next time, I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch uj^on myself, my good word will go far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder poten- tate you wot of ! " " I profess, madam," answered the clergjonan, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good - breeding made imperative, — "I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words ! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate ; neither do I, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favor of such a personage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 265 the many precious souls he hath won from heathen- dom ! " " Ha, ha, ha ! " cackled the old witch-lady, still nod- ding her high head - dress at the minister. " Well, well, we must needs talk thus in the daytime ! You carry it off like an old hand ! But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together ! " She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognize a secret intimacy of connection. " Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow- starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master ! " The wretcheds minister ! He had made a bargain very like it ! /Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himseK, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impidses, and awakened into vi\'id life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bit- terness, improvoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened him. J And his en- counter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits. He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betrapng him- self to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually im- 266 THE SCARLET LETTER. pelled while passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfoi-t of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward. Here he had studied and written ; here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive ; here, striven to pray ; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies ! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all ! There, on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sen- tence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon ! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the for- est; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mys- teries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that ! While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, " Come in ! " — not wholly devoid of an idea that he might be- hold an evil spirit. And so he did ! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scrip- tures, and the other spread upon his breast. " Welcome home, reverend Sir," said the physiciaa "And how found you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot ? But methinks, dear Sir, you look pale ; as if THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 267 the travel througli the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your Election Ser- mon?" " Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. " My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed, have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. T think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand." All this time, Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost con\dnced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspi- cion, with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knew then, that, in the min- ister's regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but Ms bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things ; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without dis- turbing it. Thus, the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained to- wards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret. " Were it not better," said he, " that you use my poor skill to-night ? Verily, dear Sir, we must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this occa- sion of the Election discourse. The people look for 268 THE SCARLET LETTER. great things from you ; apprehending that another year may come about, and find their pastor gone." " Yea, to another world," rej)lied the minister, with pious resignation. " Heaven grant it be a better one •, for, in good sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year ! ^ But, touching your medicine, kind Sir, in my present frame of body, I need it not." "I joy to hear it," answered the physician. "It may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's gratitude, could I acliieve this ciu-e ! " " I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, with a solemn smile. " I thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers." " A good man's prayers are golden recompense ! " rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave. " Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jeru- salem, with the King's own mint-mark on them ! " Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. Then, flinging the al- ready written pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired ; and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and sol- emn music of its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe as he. However, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved forever, he drove his task onward, with earnest haste and ecstasy. Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it ; THE MINISTER IN A MAZE. 269 morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the cur- tains ; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study and laid it right across the minister's bedaz- zled eyes. vThere he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him! J XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to receive his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl came into the market-place. It was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers ; among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surroimded the little metropolis of the colony. On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fasliion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline ; while, again, the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long familiar to the to^\^lspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask ; or, rather, like the frozen calm- ness of a dead woman's features ; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had de- parted out of the world, with which she still seemed to mingle. It might be, on this one day, that there was an THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY- 271 expression iinseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected, now ; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven miserable years as a neces- sity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to con- vert what had so long been agony into a kind of tri- umph. " Look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer ! " — the people's victim and life - long bond- slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. " Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach ! A few hours longer, and the deep mysterious ocean will quench and hide forever the symbol which ye have caused to burn upon her bosom ! " Nor were it an in- consistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hes- ter's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breath- less draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been per- petually flavored? The wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker ; or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency. Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would have been impossible to guess that this bright and 272 THE SCARLET LETTER. suuny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray ; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so with the child ; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singidar inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on \ which it is displayed. Children have always a sym- j pathy in the agitations of those connected with them ; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impend- ing revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circum- stances ; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in \^e marble passiveness of Hester's brow. This effervescence made her flit with a bird -like movement, rather than walk by her mother's side. She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inartic- ulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they reached the market-place, she became still more rest- less, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot ; for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's business. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 273 " Why, what is this, mother ? " cried she. " Where- fore have all the people left their work to-day ? Is it a play-day for the whole world? See, there is the blacksmith ! He has washed his sooty face, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why does he do so, mother ? " " He remembers thee a little babe, my child," an- swered Hester. " He should not nod and smile at me, for all that, — the black, grim, ugly-eyed old man ! " said Pearl. " He may nod at thee, if he will ; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother? how many faces of strange people, and Indians among them, and sailors ! What have they all come to do, here in the market-place ? " " They wait to see the procession pass," said Hes- ter. " For the Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and aU the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before them." " And will the minister be there ? " asked Pearl. " And will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side ? " "He will be there, child," answered her mother. " But he will not greet thee to-day ; nor must thou greet him." " What a strange, sad man is he ! " said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. " In the dark night- time he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder. And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can VOL. V. 18 274 THE SCARLET LETTER. hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with the©, sitting- on a heap of moss ! And he kisses my fore- head, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not ; nor must we know him ! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart ! " "Be quiet, Pearl! Thou understandest not these things," said her mother. " Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have come from their schools, and the gi'own people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them ; and so — as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered — they make merry and rejoice ; as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world ! " It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of the year — as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centu- ries — the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity ; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction. But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and man- ners of the age. The persons now in the market- place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 275 Elizabethan epoch ; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries and processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremo- nies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroi- dery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an at- tempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a col- orless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old London, — we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show, — might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of the com- monwealth— the statesman, the priest, and the sol- dier — deemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked uj)on as the proper garb of public or social eminence. All came forth, to move in proces- sion before the people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed. Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not en- couraged, in relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged industry, which, at all other times, seemed of the same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the 276 THE SCARLET LETTER. appliances Nvliich popular merriment would so read- ily have fomid in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James ; no rude shows of a theatrical kind ; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor glee- man, with an ape dancing to his music ; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft ; no Merry An- drew, to stir up the midtitude with jests, perhaps hun- dreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirtliful sympathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocidar- ity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the coimtry fairs and on the village- greens of England ; and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential in them. Wrest- ling-matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place ; in one corner there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff ; and — what attracted most interest of all — on the platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the maj- esty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places. It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole (the people being then in the first stages of joyless deport- THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 277 ment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would compare favorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their de- scendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritan- ism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety. The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians — in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum - belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear — stood apart, with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect coidd at- tain. Nor, wdld as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinc- tion could more justly be claimed bj^some mariners, — a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main, — who had come ashore to see the humors of Elec- tion Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard ; their wide, short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf gleamed ej^es which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of be- havior that were binding on all others ; smoking to- 278 THE SCARLET LETTER. bacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling ; and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-^'ita3 from pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gap- ing crowd around them. It remarkably characterized the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a license was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more des- perate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day woidd go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable spec- imens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty', as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed, very much at its own wall, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at reg- ulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land ; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage wdth whom it was disreputable to traf- fic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamor and rude dei^ortment of these jolly seafaring men ; and it ex- cited neither surprise nor animadversion when so rep- utable a citizen as old Roger ChillingW'Orth, the phy- sician, w^as seen to enter the market-place, in close and familiar talk with the conamander of the question- able vessel. The latter was by far the most showy and gallant THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY. 279 figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore a profusion of rib- bons on his garment, and gold-lace on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmoimted with a feather. There was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales. After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship strolled idly through the market- place ; until happening to approach the spot where Hester Prynne was standing, he appeared to recog- nize, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area — a sort of magic circle — had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbow- ing one another at a little distance, none ventured, or felt disposed, to intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer ; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, with- drawal of her fellow-crestures. Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose, by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard ; and so changed was Hester Prynne's re- pute before the public, that the matron in town most eminent for rigid morality could not have held such intercoiu'se with less result of scandal than herself. 280 THE SCARLET LETTER. " So, mistress," said the marinei*, " I must bid the steward make ready one more berth than you bar- gained for ! No fear of scurvy or shijvf ever this voy- ao-e! What with the ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill ; more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded for with a Spanish vessel." " What mean you ? " inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted to appear. " Have you another passenger ? " " Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician here — Chillingworth, he calls himself — is minded to try my cabin-fare with you ? Ay, ay, you must have known it ; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of, — he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers ! " " They know each other well, indeed," replied Hes- ter, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. " They have long dwelt together." Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But, at that instant, she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in the remot- est corner of the market-place, and smiling on her ; a smile which — across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd — con- veyed secret and fearful meaning. xxn. THE PROCESSION. Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a con- tiguous street. It denoted the advance of the proces- sion of magistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house ; where, in compliance with a cus- tom thus early established, and ever since observed, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an Elec- tion Sermon. Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning a corner and mak- ing its way across the market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill ; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses it- self to the multitude, — that of impai'ting a higher and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes be- fore the eye. Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning ; she gazed silently and seemed to be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves and swells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sun- 282 THE SCARLET LETTER. sliine on the weapons and bright armor of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery — which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honorable fame — was composed of no mercenary ma- terials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to estab- lish a kind of College of Arms, where as in an asso- ciation of Knights Templars, they might learn the sci- ence, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries and on other fields of warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of sol- diership. The entire array, moreover, clad in bur- nished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal. And yet the men of ci\dl eminence, who came imme- diately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward de- meanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence ; which, in their de- scendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller pro- portion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the se- lection and estimate of public men. The change may THE PROCESSION. 283 be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, the English settler on these rude shores, having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the facidty and necessity of reverence were strong in him, bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age ; on long-tried in- tegrity ; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience ; on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore, — Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers, — who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well rep- resented in the square cast of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanor of natural authority was con- cerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual de- mocracy adojited into the House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign. Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. His was the profession, at that era, in which intellec- tual ability displayed itself far more than in political life ; for — leaving a higher motive out of the ques- tion — it offered inducements powerful enough, in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win •284 THE SCARLET LETTER, the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even po- litical power — as in the case of Increase Mather — was within the grasp of a successful priest. It was the observation of those who beheld him now that never, since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step, as at other times ; his frame was not bent ; nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergjTnan were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the ex- hilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only in the furnace glow of earnest and long - continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music, that swelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There was his body, moving on- ward, and with an imaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busy- ing itself, with preternatural acti\dty, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence ; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of what was around him ; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame, and carried it along, imconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have growTi morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as many more. Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, THE PROCESSION. 285 felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not ; unless that he seemed so re- mote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. One glance of recognition, she had imagined, must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trimk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled theu' sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they known each other then ! And was this the man ? She hardly knew him now ! He, mov- ing proudly past, enveloped, as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers ; he, so unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathiz- ing thoughts, through which she now beheld him ! Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester, that she could scarcely forgive him, — least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer ! — for be- ing able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world ; while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not. Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feel- ings, or herseK felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around the minister. While the pro- cession passed, the child was imeasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into Hester's face, " Mother," said she, " was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook? " 286 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Hold tliy peace, dear little Pearl ! " whispered her mother. " We must not always talk in the market- place of what happens to us in the forest." " I could not be sure that it was he ; so sti'ange he looked," continued the cliild. " Else I woidd have run to hmi, and bid liim kiss me now, before all the peo- ple ; even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother ? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me be gone ? " " What should he say, Pearl,'' answered Hester, " save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place ? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him ! " Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities — or insanity, as we should term it — led her to do what few of the townsjDeople would have ventured on : to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter, in public. It was Mistress Hib- bins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the proces- sion. As this ancient lady had the renown (wliich subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a i:)rincipal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction wdth Hester Prj^nne, — kindly as so many now felt towards the latter, — the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the mar- ket-place in which the two women stood. THE PROCESSION. 287 " Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it ! *' whispered the old lady, confidentially, to Hester. " Yonder divine man ! That saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as — I must needs say — he really looks ! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of his study, — chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant, — to take an airing in the forest ! Aha ! we know what that means, Hester Prynne ! But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church-mem- ber saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody was fid- dler, and, it might be, an Indian poww^ow or a Lap- land wizard changing hands with us ! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this min- ister ! Couldst thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that encountered thee on the for- est-path?" " Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of in- firm mind; yet strangely startled and awe -stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (herself among them) and the Evil One. " It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious minister of the Word, like the Reverend Mr. Dinmiesdale ! " " Fie, woman, fie ! " cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester. " Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there ? Yea ; though no leaf of the wild garlands, which they wore while they danced be left in their hair ! I know thee, Hester ; for I behold the token. We may all see it in the sim- 288 THE SCARLET LETTER. shine ; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly ; so there need be no question about that. But this minister ! Let me tell thee, in thine ear ! When the Black Man sees one of his o^vn servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordermg matters so that the mark shall be dis- closed in open daylight to the eyes of all the world 1 What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne ! " " What is it, good Mistress Hibbins ? " eagerly asked little Pearl. " Hast thou seen it ? " " No matter, darling ! " responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a profound reverence. " Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air ! Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart! " Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her depar- ture. By this time the preliminary prayer had been of- fered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discoiirse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar voice. This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment •, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of THE PROCESSION. 289 the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. Muf- fled as the sound was by its passage through the church-walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intent- ness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser me- dium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itseK ; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for- ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish, — the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering hu- manity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom ! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding, — when it gushed irrepressibly up- ward, — when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls and diffuse itself in the open air, — still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it ? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow- laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; be- VOL. V. 19 290 THE SCARLET LETTER. seeching its sympathy or forgiveness, — at every mo- ment, — in each accent, — and never in vain ! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman liis most appropriate power. During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that S23ot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within her, — too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind, — that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity. Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will about the market- place. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray ; even as a bii'd of bright pliunage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and haK concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an im- didating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular move- ment. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played upon and \abrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw any- thing to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it ; but without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less in- clined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with THE PROCESSION. 291 its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face ; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land ; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time. One of these seafaring men — the shipmaster, in- deed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne — was so smitten with Pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Find- ing it as impossible to touch her as to catch a hum- ming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist, with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it. " Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet let- ter," said the seaman. " Wilt thou carry her a mes- sage from me ? " " If the message pleases me, I will," answered Pearl. " Then tell her," rejoined he, " that I spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her this, thou witch-baby ? " " Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air ! " cried Pearl, with a naughty smile. " If thou callest me that ill name, 1 shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest ! " 292 THE SCARLET LETTER. Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, tlie child returned to her mother, and conmaLmiicated what the mariner had said. Hester's strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on he- holding this dark and grim countenance of an inevi- table doom, which — at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery — showed itself, with an un- relenting smile, right in the midst of their path. With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There were many peojjle present, from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Hester Pryime with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they accord- ingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado- looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were af- fected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's cu- riosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom ; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of tliis brilliantly embroi- dered badge must needs be a personage of high dig- nity among her people. Lastly, the inhabitants of the towTi (their own mterest in this worn-out subject Ian- THE PROCESSION. 293 guidly revi\ang itseK, by sympatliy with what thej saw others feel) loiinged idly to the same quarter, and tor- mented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognized the self -same faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forth- coming from the prison-door, seven years ago ; all save one, the yoimgest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully than at any time since the first day she put it on. While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had jaelded to his control. The sainted minister in the church ! The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place ! What imagi- nation would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both ! XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listen- ins: audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a mur- mur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors, re- leased from the high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were retm-ning into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere wliich the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought. In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man sjDoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day ; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descend- REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 295 ing upon him, and possessing him, and continually- lifting him out of the written discourse that lay be- fore him, and filling liim with ideas that must have been as marvellous to himseK as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of j)roj)hecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained ; only with this dif- ference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mis- sion to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural re- gret of one soon to pass away. Yes ; their minister whom they so loved — and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh — had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and wotdd soon leave them in their tears ! This idea of his tran- sitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the ef- fect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant, — at once a shadow and a splendor, — and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them. Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dim- mesdale — as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it far behind them — an epoch of life more brilliant and full of tri- lunph than any previous one, or than any which could 296 THE SCARLET LETTER. hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a rep- utation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast ! Now was heard again the clangor of music, and the measured tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The procession was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day. Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers was seen mo^ang through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly in the market - place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This — though doubtless it might acquire additional force and vol- ume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers — was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, in the same breath, caught it from his neighbor. Within the church, it had hardly been kept down ; beneath the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There were hmnan beings enough, and enough of highly wrought REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 297 and symplionious feeling, to produce that more im- pressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea ; even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New England, had gone up such a shout ! Never, on New England soil, had stood the man honored by his mor- tal brethren as the preacher ! How fared it with him then ? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head ? So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheo- sized by worshijjping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of earth ? As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of hun. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph ! The en- ergy — or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up mitil he should have delivered the sacred mes- sage that brought its own strength along with it from Heaven — was withdrawn, now that it had so faith- fully performed its office. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extin- guished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a deathlike hue ; it was hardly a man with life in liim that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall! One of his clerical brethren. — it was the venerable John Wilson, — observing the state in which Mr. Dim- mesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and 298 THE SCARLET LETTER. sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his sup- port. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. lie still walked onward, if that movement coiUd be so described, which rather resem- bled the wavering effort of an infant with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well- remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne had encountered the world's ignomin- ious stare. There stood Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand ! And there was the scarlet letter on her breast ! The minister here made a pause, although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the procession moved. It smnmoned him onward, — onward to the festival ! — but here he made a pause. BeUingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. He now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give assistance, jvidg- ing, from Mr. Diimnesdale's aspect, that he must oth- erwise inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's expression that warned back the magis- trate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial strength ; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, wax- ing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven. He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms. REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 299 " Hester," said he, " come hither ! Come, my little Pearl!" It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them ; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne - — slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will — likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this instant, old Roger Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd, — or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he rose up out of some nether region, — to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do ! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and caught the minister by the arm. " Madman, hold ! what is your purpose ? " whispered he. " Wave back that woman ! Cast off this child ! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor ! I can yet save you ! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession ? " " Ha, tempter ! Methinks thou art too late ! " an- swered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. " Thy power is not what it was ! With God's help, I shall escape thee now ! " He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter. " Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnest- ness, " in the name of Him, so terrible and so merci- ful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what — for my own heavy sin and miserable agony — I witliheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me ! Thy strength, Hester ; but let it be guided by the will 300 THE SCARLET LETTER. wliieli God liath gi-anted me I This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might! with all his o\vn might, and the fiend's ! Come, Hes- ter, come ! Support me up yonder scaffold ! " The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately aroimd the clergjTnan, were so taken by surj^rise, and so per- plexed as to the purport of what they saw, — unable to receive the explanation wliich most readily pre- sented itself, or to imagine any other, — that they re- mained sUent and inactive spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about to work. They be- held the minister, leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaf- fold, and ascend its steps ; while still the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be pres- ent at its closing scene. " Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,'* said he, looking darkly at the clergj^man, " there was no one place so secret, — no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me, — save on this very scaffold ! " " Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither ! " an- swered the minister. Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester ^vith an ex- pression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smUe upon his lips. " Is not this better," murmured he, " than what we dreamed of in the forest?" " I know not ! I know noti " she hurriedly replied. REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 301 " Better ? Yea ; so we may both die, and little Pearl die with us ! " " For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which He hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make haste to talce my shame upon me ! " Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmes- dale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers ; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren ; to the peo- ple, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sjTiipathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter — which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance like^dse — was now to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its merid- ian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a dis- tinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eter- nal Justice. " People of New England ! " cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic, — yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of re- morse and woe, — " ye, that have loved me ! — ye, that have deemed me holy ! — behold me here, the one sinner of the world ! At last ! — at last ! — I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood ; here, with tliis woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hith- erward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face ! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears ! Ye have all shuddered at it ! Wherever her walk hath been, — wherever, so miser- 302 THE SCARLET LETTER. ably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose, — it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repug- nance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered ! " It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily weakness, — and, still more, the faintness of heart, — that was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the child. " It was on him ! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness, — so determined was he to speak out the whole. " God's eye beheld it ! The angels were for- ever pointing at it! The De\al knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a spirit, mourn- ful, because so pure in a sinful world ! — and sad, be- cause he missed his heavenly kindred ! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you ! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart ! Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner ? Be- hold ! Behold a dreadful witness of it ! " With a con\Tilsive motion, he tore away the minis- terial band from before his breast. It was revealed ! But it were irreverent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle ; while the min- REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. 303 ister stood, with a flusli of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, do^vTi he sank ujDon the scaffokl ! Hester partly raised hun, and supported his head against her bosom, Ohl Roger Chilling worth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed. " Thou hast escaped me ! " he repeated more than once. " Thou hast escaped me ! " "May God forgive thee! " said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply sinned ! " He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the child. " My little Pearl," said he, feebly, — and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose ; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be spor- tive with the child, — " dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt ? " Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of gTief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies ; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, ne^-forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. j Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a ■vOiBssenger of anguish was all fulfilled. " Hester," said the clergyman, " farewell ! " " Shall we not meet again ? " whispered she, bend- ing her face down close to his. " Shall we not spend our immortal life together ? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe ! Thou look- est far into eternity, with those bright dying eye si Then tell me what thou seest ? " 304 THE SCARLET LETTER. " Hush, Hester, hush ! " said he, with tremulous so- lemnity. " The law we broke ! — the sin here so aw- fully revealed ! — let these alone be in thy thoughts ! I fear ! I fear ! It may be that, when we forgot our God, — when we violated our reverence each for the other's soiU, — it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure re- union, God knows ; and He is mercifid ! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me tliis burning tortui-e to bear upon my breast ! By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat ! By bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people ! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever! Praised be his name! His will be done ! Farewell! " That final word came forth with the minister's ex- piring breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which coidd not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit. XXIV. CONCLUSION. After many days, when time sufficed for tlie peo- ple to arrange their thoughts in reference to the fore- going scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold. Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a scarlet letter — the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne — imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various explanations, all of which must nec- essarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begim a course of penance, — which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out, — by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced vmtil a long time subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again, — and those best able to appreciate the minis- ter's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of liis spirit upon the body, — whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart out- wardly, and at last manifesting Heaven's dreadful Judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The VOL. V. 20 306 THE SCARLET LETTER. reader may choose among these theories. We have throwTi all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long medi- tation has fixed it in very imdesirable distinctness. — It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the lieverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-bom in- fant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet let- ter. According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying, — conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels, — had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen wom- an, to exjjress to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhaust- ing life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sin- ners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dunmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends — and especially a clergyman's — will CONCLUSION. 307 sometimes upheld his character, when proofs, clear as the mid - day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust. -^The authority which we have chiefly followed, — a manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal tes- timony of individuals, some of whom had known Hes- ter Prynne, while others had heard the tale from con- temporary witnesses, — fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable ex- perience, we put only this into a sentence : " Be true ! Be true ! Be true ! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred ! " Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man known as Roger Cliillingworth. All his strength and energy — all his vital and intellectual force — seemed at once to desert him ; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge ; and when, by its com- pletest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mor- tal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquain- tances, — as well Roger Chillingworth as his compan* ions, — we would fain be merciful. It is a curious 808 THE SCARLET LETTER. subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a liigh degree of inti- macy and heart-knowledge ; each renders one individ- ual dependent for the food of his affections and spirit- ual life iipon another ; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically consid- ered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and luiid glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister — mutual \dctims as they have been — may, unawares, have found theii* eartlily stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love. Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth's decease (which took place within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England, to lit- tle Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne. So Pearl — the elf -child, — the demon offspring, as some people, up to that epoch, persisted in consider- ing her, — became the richest heiress of her day, in the New World. Not improbably, this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estima- tion ; and, had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a marriageable period of life, might have mingled her \vild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and Pearl along with. her. CONCLUSION. 309 For many years, tliougli a vague report would now and then find its way across the sea, — like a shapeless piece of drift-wood tost ashore, with the initials of a name upon it, — yet no tidings of them unquestion- ably authentic were received. The story of the scar- let letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea- shore, where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon, some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, ap- proach the cottage -door. In all those years it had never once been opened ; but either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadowlike through these impediments. — and, at all events, went in. On the threshold she paused, — turned partly roimd. — for, perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast. And Hester PrjTine had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame ! But where was little Pearl ? If still alive, she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew — nor ever learned, with the fulness of perfect certainty — whether the eK-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave, or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman's gentle hap- piness. But, through the remainder of Hester's life, there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armo- 310 THE SCARLET LETTER. rial seals upon them, though of bearings unkno\\Ti to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased, and affection have imagined for her. There were trifles, too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by deli- cate fingers, at the impulse of a fond heart. And, once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus ap- parelled, been shown to our sober-hued community. In fine, the gossips of that day believed, — and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed, — and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes, — that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindfiU of her mother, and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fire- side. But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that miknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin ; here, her sorrow ; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed, — of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it, — resmned the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self - devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with CONCLUSION, 311 reverence too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and per- plexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially, — in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion, — or with the dreary burden of a heart imyielded, because imvalued and unsought, — came to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy ! Hester comforted and counselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. ^Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imi^|";in^d thnt i^hp herselTmight be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life -long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful ; and wise, more- over, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy ; and showing how sacred love should make us hajyjjy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an en_d!; So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which Bang's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and 312 THE SCARLET LETTER. sunken gi\ave, yet with a space between, as If the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings ; and on this simple slab of slate — as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the pur- port — there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend ; so sombre is it, and re- lieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow,: — "On a field, sable, the letter A, gules." THE BLITHEDALE EOMA]^CE. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. " The Blithedale Romance " follows in order of time " The House of the Seven Gables ; " having been written during the winter of 1851-52, which Haw- thorne spent at West Newton, Massachusetts. It may here be observed incidentally that no two of his ro- mances were composed in the same place. " The Scarlet Letter " was wi-itten at Salem ; the " Seven Gables " at Lenox ; " The Marble Faun " partially at Floi'ence, Italy, — being afterwards recast at Red- car, England ; and the final, unfinished ones, " Sep- timius Felton " and " The Dolliver Romance " were produced at The Wayside, in Concord. Simdry externals of the scenery and character in " The Blithedale Romance " were suggested by the sojourn of the author mth the transcendental and socialistic community at Brook Farm, Roxbury, then (1841) on the outskirts of Boston. But it woidd be a serious error were we to conclude that he intended giving, under this imaginative cover, any comprehen- sive impression of that interesting experiment. As he observes in the Preface, " His whole treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance ; nor does he put forward the slightest 316 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. pretensions to illustrate a theory or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in respect to socialism." ^ None the less, there are some interesting correspond- ences to be noticed between personages and surround- inirs in the book, and actual observations of the au- thor at the community or elsewhere. The picturesque setting of the twenty-fourth chapter, entitled " The Masqueraders," will be found sketched m a passage of the "American Note -Books," dated Sej^tember 28, 1841, which gives some details of a fancy dress picnic party gotten up by some of the Brook Farmers. One of the two entries under September 27th, also, con- tains an account of a grape-vine in the neighborhood, ascending " almost to the tip of a large white-pine," by means of which he mounted into the tree-boughs and ate the fruit there. The same grape-vine is charmingly utilized in " Coverdale's Hermitage," ^ that "kind of leafy cave" formed by a wreathing "entan- glement of tendrils " high up among the branches of a pine-tree. The original of Old Moodie is manifestly an individual whom the author long afterward (in 1850) saw lingering in front of a restaurant in Court Square, Boston, and commented upon in his journal as wearing a patch over one eye and having " a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability about him . . . and a kind of decency in his red-nosed and groggy destitution." From that slight sketch was constructed the dubious and pathetic figure of Moodie, father to Zenobia and Priscilla, who is depicted as a fugitive hiding under an assumed name, to escape the conse- 1 With regard to this whole subject of the relation existing be- tween The Blithedale Romance and Hawthorne's Brook Farm con- nection, the reader may consult the fifth chapter of A Study of Haw- thome. 2 The Blithedale Romance, Chapter XII. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 317 quences of a financial crime. The name Fauntleroy, given as liis real one, was probably borrowed from that banker, Henry Fauntleroy, whose forgeries, pros- ecuted by the Bank of England and leading to his execution, made him a distinguished character in crim- inal liistory,^ about the year 1824, while Hawthorne was still a Bowdoin undergraduate. The daughtei* Priscilla was, to begin with, modelled on a diminutive woman, a seamstress, who spent a week at Brook Farm, and appears in the " Note-Books " (October 9, 1841). But it will be seen, on comparison, that Priscilla is etherealized into a something which can be likened to thei model only in a superficial way. Zenobia, the other daughter, who holds so important a place in the romance, it has been thought was sug- gested by Margaret Fuller, or by a lady who was ac- tually domiciled at Brook Farm while Hawthorne was staying there. Both these theories are doubtless in- correct, so far as they assume that Hawthorne con- sciously drew from either of the persons in question. Margaret Fuller was not a member of the community at all, any more than was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, in popidar estimation, has been identified with it. Furthermore, a gentleman who lived at the farm has declared to the writer that, while Zenobia did not re- call Margaret Fuller, he fancied he sa^v^ in her a par- tial resemblance to several women. In fact, the main likeness to Miss Fuller seems to have lain in Zeno- bia's reputed literary reno^v^l, and in a certain grace- ful strength of character common to both. Some who have inclined to insist on the resemblance admit simul- 1 The case of Fauntleroy is given at some length in William Ilowitt's Northern Heights of London (p. 415). That accoimt is taken from The Gentleman's Magazine for 1824, Part II., 461. 318 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. taneously that, considered as a portraiture of Miss Fuller, the picture of Zenobia Fauntleroy cannot be called accurate. From Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, the sister-in-law of Hawthorne, it is learned that he explicitly denied ever having any of his acquaintance in mind when developing the persons of his dramas. In this very mstance of Zenobia he remarked, on be- ing asked, that once or twice a floating but only par- tial likeness between his heroine and Miss Fuller had presented itself to him ; but this merely as one in- dividual might remind him vaguely of another. The woman he had imagined was so real to him and so distinctive, that the actual woman just referred to of- fered herself simply as an illustration of the former. On the other hand, where he had seen but little of people and did not know them — like the seamstress and the vagabond, standing respectively for Priscilla and Moodie — he seized upon their outward appear- ance, and then invented their inner traits to suit his o^\^l purpose. One other coincidence should be included in this brief summary. In a volume called " Homes of Amer- ican Authors," published thirty years ago, George William Curtis inserted a chapter on Hawthorne, which embraced some valuable references to the ro- mancer's retired mode of life at Concord ; and at the close he recalled a local episode, — that, namely, of a young woman's suicide by drowning in the Concord River, which is pertinent to the present theme. This girl, a farmer's daughter, had received an education which awakened aspirations beyond the ability of her circumstances to satisfy ; and, aftel much silent brood- ing, she one evening disappeared. It was suspected that she had made away with herself, and the river INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 319 was thought of. " Then," writes Mr. Curtis, who was himself present, " with the swiftness of certainty all friends far and near were roused and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in boats that put off for the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had seen at morning only as a moving spectre in his garden now appeared among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream ; the torches flared strangely upon the black repose of the water . . . but at length toward midnight the sweet face of the dead girl was raised more placidly to the stars than it had ever been to the Sim. ... So ended a village tragedy. The reader may possibly find in it the original of the thrilling conclusion of the 'Blithedale Romance.' The like- ness here becomes still more striking when it is added that, just as Miles Coverdale is made to awaken Hol- lingsworth by tossing a clod of earth into his sleeping- room, so Mr. Curtis stood beneath Hawthorne's win- dow, and in a similar manner roused him. The two then went out in a boat, with one of the villagers ; precisely as Coverdale, Hollingsworth, and Silas Foster go upon their gloomy quest, in the chapter headed " Midnight." Of the book, when completed, Haw- thorne wrote in a letter to his friend Horatio Bridge this sentence heretofore unpubHshed : " Perhaps you have seen ' Blithedale ' before this time. I doubt whether you will like it very well, but it has met with good success, and has brought me (besides its American circulation) a thousand dollars from Eng- land, whence, likewise, have come many favorable no- 320 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. tices," Despite the extreme modesty of his tone con- cerning- it, the book met with a cordial reception, and slowly made its way to the position it now occupies as one of the classics of American literature. G. P. L, PREFACE. In the " Blithedale " of this vokime many readers will, probably, suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of Brook Faem, in Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten years ago) was occupied and ^ cultivated by a company of socialists. The z&Aitlio^ i\ does not wish to deny that he had this communityln ,; hJB^mind, and that (having had the good fortune, for t^ a time, to be personally connected with it) he has oc- ( casionally availed himseK of his actual reminiscences, j in the hope of giving a more life-like tint to the fancy- sketch in the following pages. He begs it to be im- derstood, however, that he has considered the institu- tion itself as not less fairly the subject of fictitious handling than the imaginary personages whom he has introduced there. His whole treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance ; nor does he put forward the slightest pre- tensions to illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in respect to socialism. In short, his present concern with the socialist com- munity is merely to establish a theatre, a little re- . , moved from the highway of ordinary travel, where thai l^C^CiLi creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagor-( qI ical antics, without exposing them to too close a com-\ ^ parison with the actual events of real lives. In the old \ countries, with which fiction has long been conversant VOL. V. 21 322 PREFACE. ^ a certaiu conventional priN-ilege seems to be awarded to tlieTbmancei- ; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature ; and he is allowed a license with re- gard to e very-day probability, in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no such Faery Land, so lilce the real world, that, in a suitable remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a proi)riety of their own. This atmosi)here is what the American romancer needs. In its absence, the beings of imag- ination are compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals ; a necessity that generally renders the paint and pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible. With the idea of partially ob\aating' this difficulty (the sense of which has always pressed very heavily upon him), the author has ventured to make free with his old and affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm, as being certainly the most romantic episode of his own life, — essentially a day-dream, and yet a fact, — and thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality. Fiu'thermore, the scene was in good keeping with the personages whom he desired to introduce. These characters, he feels_it_nght_to say, are_en- tii:elyL_fictitioiis. It woidd, indeed (considering how few amiable qualities he distributes among his im- aginary progeny), be a most grievous wrong to his former excellent associates, were the author to allow it to be supposed that he has been sketching any of their likenesses. Had he attempted it, they would at least have recognized the touches of a friendly pencil But he has done nothing of the kind. The self-con- PREFACE. 323 centrated Philantliropist ; the high-spirited Woman, bruising herself against the narrow limitations of her sex ; the weakly Maiden, whose tremulous nerves en- dow her with Sibylline attributes ; the Minor Poet, be- ginning life with strenuous aspirations which die out with his youtliful fervor, — all these might have been looked for at Brook Farm, but, by some accident, never made their appearance there. The author cannot close his reference to this subject without expressing a most earnest wish that some one of the many cultivated and philosophic minds, which took an interest in that enterprise, might now give the world its history. Ripley, with whom rests the honor- able paternity of the institution, Dana, Dwight, Chan- ning. Burton, Parker, for instance, — with others, whom he dares not name, because they veil themselves from the public eye, — among these is the ability to convey both the outward narrative and the inner truth and spirit of the whole affair, together with the lessons which those years of thought and toil must have elaborated, for the behoof of future experimen- talists. Even the brilliant Howadji might find as rich a theme in his youthful reminiscences of Brook Farm, and a more novel one, — close at hand as it lies, — than those which he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to seek, in Syria and along the current of the Nile. Concord, Mass., May^ 1852. THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, OLD MOODIE. The evening before my departm-e for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor ajjartments, after attend- ing the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man, of rather shabby appearance, met me in an obscure part of the street. "Mr. Coverdale," said he, softly, "can I speak with you a moment ? " As I have casually alluded to the Veiled Lady, it may not be amiss to mention, for the benefit of such of my readers, as are unacquainted with her now for- gotten celebrity, that she was a phenomenon in the mesmeric line ; one of the earliest that had indicated the birth of a new science, or the revival of an old humbug. Since those times her sisterhood have grown too numerous to attract much individual notice ; nor, in fact, has any one of them come before the public under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage- effect as those which at once mystified and illuminated the remarkable performances of the lady in question. Nowadays, in the management of his " subject," " clair- voyant," or " medium," the exhibitor affects the sim- plicity and openness of scientific experiment ; and even 326 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. '-^ if he profess to tread a step or two across tlie bounda- ries of the spiritual world, yet carries with hiin the laws of our actual life, and extends them over his pre- ternatural conquests. Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the contrary, all the arts of mysterious arrangement, of pit'turesque disposition, and artistically contrasted light and shade, were made available, in order to set the ap- parent miracle in the strongest attitude of opposition to ordinary facts. In the case of the Veiled Lady, moreover, the interest of the spectator was further wrought up by the enigma of her identity, and an ab- surd rumor (probably set afloat by the exhibitor, and at one time very prevalent) that a beautiful young lady, of family and fortune, was enshrouded witliin the misty drapery of the veil. It was white, with somewhat of a subdued silver sheen, like the sunny side of a cloud ; and, falling over the wearer from head to foot, was supposed to insidate her from the material world, from time and space, and to endow her with many of the jDriyileges of a disembodied spirit. Her pretensions, however, whether miraculous or oth- erwise, have little to do with the present narrative ; except, indeed, that I had propounded, for the Veiled Lady's prophetic solution, a query as to the success of our Blithedale enterprise. The response, by the by, was of the true Sibylline stamp, — nonsensical in its first aspect, yet, on closer study, unfolding a variety of interpretations, one of which has certainly accorded with the event. I was turning over this riddle in my mind, and trying to catch its slippery purport by the tail, when the old man above mentioned interrupted me. " Mr. Coverdale ! — Mr. Coverdale ! " said he, re- peating my name twice, in order to make up for the OLD MOODIE. 327 hesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it. " I ask your pardon, sir, but I hear you are going to Blithedale to-morrow." I knew the pale, elderly face, mth the red-tipt nose, and the patch over one eye ; and likewise saw some- thing characteristic in the old fellow's way of stand- ing under the arch of a gate, only revealing enough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaint^»eer- ^ f\ He was a very shy personage, this Mr. Moodi^; and Oju^cthA^j the trait was the more singular, as his mode of getting /./,|w.. -Jj his bread necessarily brought him into the stir and^' /i hubbub of the world more than the generality of men. vJ " Yes, Mr. Moodie," I answered, wondering what in- terest he coidd take in the fact, " it is my intention to go to Blithedale to-morrow. Can I be of any service to you before my departure ? " " If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale," said he, " you might do me a very great favor." " A very great one ? " repeated I, in a tone that must have expressed but little alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man any amount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself. " A very great favor, do you say ? My time is brief, Mr. Moodie, and I have a good many preparations to make. But be good enough to tell me what you wish." " Ah, sii"," replied Old Moodie, " I don't quite like to do that ; and, on fm-ther thoughts, Mr. Coverdale, perhajis I had better apply to some older gentleman, or to some lady, if you would have the kindness to make me known to one, wlio may happen to be going to Blithedale. You are a young man, sir ! " " Does that fact lessen my availability for your pur- pose ? " asked I. " However, if an older man will suit you better, there is Mr. Hollingsworth, who has three 328 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. or ionv years the advantage of me in age, and is a much more solid character, and a philanthropist to boot. I am only a poet, and, so the critics tell me, no great affair at that ! But what can this business be, Mr. Moodie ? It begins to interest me ; especially since your hint that a lady's influence might be found desirable. Come, I am really anxious to be of service to you." But the old fellow, in his civil and demure manner, was both freakish and obstinate ; and he had now taken some notion or other into his head that made him hesitate in his former design. " I wonder, sir," said he, " whether you know a lady whom they call Zenobia ? " " Not personally," I answered, " although I expect that pleasure to-morrow, as she has got the start of the rest of us, and is already a resident at Blithedale. But have you a literary turn, Mr. Moodie ? or have you taken up the advocacy of women's rights ? or what else can have interested you in this lady ? Zenobia, by the by, as I suppose you know, is merely her public name ; a sort of mask in which she comes before the world, re- taining all the privileges of privacy, — a contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady, only a little more transparent. But it is late. Will you tell me what I can do for you ? " " Please to excuse me to-night, Mr. Coverdale," said Moodie. " You are very kind ; but I am afraid I have troubled you, when, after all, there may be no need. Perhaps, with your good leave, I will come to your lodgings to-morrow morning, before you set out for Blithedale. I wish you a good-night, sir, and beg par- don for stopping you." And so he slipt away ; and, as he did not show him- OLD MOODIE. 329 self the next morning, it was only through subsequent events that I ever arrived at a plausible conjecture as to what liis business could have been. Arriving at my room, I tlu-ew a lump of cannel coal upon the grate, lighted a cigar, and spent an hoiu" in musings of every hue, from the brightest to the most sombre ; being, in truth, not so very confident as at some former periods that tliis final step, which woidd mix me up irrevocably with the Blithedale affair, was the wisest that coidd possibly be taken. It was nothing short of midnight when I went to bed, after drinking a glass of particu- larly fine sherry, on which I used to pride myself in those days. It was the very last bottle ; and I fin- ished it, with a friend, the next forenoon, before set- ting out for Blithedale. n. BLITHEDALE. There can hardly remain for me (who am really getting to be a frosty bachelor, with another wliite hair, every week or so, in my mustache), there can harclly flicker np again so cheery a blaze upon the hearth, as that which I remember, the next clay, at Blithedale. It was a wood-fire, in the parlor of an old farm-house, on an April afternoon, but mth the fitful gusts of a wintry snow-storm roaring in the chimney. Vividly does that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes from the embers in my memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack of more inspiring breath. Vividly, for an instant, but, anon, with the dimmest gleam, and with just as little fervency for my heart as for my finger-ends ! The staunch oaken logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be represented, if at all, by the merest phosphoric glim- mer, like that which exudes, rather than shines, fi-om damp fragments of decayed trees, deluding the be- Tiighted wanderer through a forest. Around such chill mockery of a fire some few of us might sit on the withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards the imaginary warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of Paradise anew. Paradise, indeed ! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to affirm — nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England, — had dreamed of Paradise BLITHEDALE. 331 that day, except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve's bower than might be seen in the snow-hut of an Esquimaux. But we made a summer of it, in sj)ite of the wild drifts. It was an April day, as already hinted, and well towards the middle of the month. When morninar dawned upon me, in town, its temperature was mild enough to be pronounced even balmy, by a lodger, like myseK, in one of the midmost houses of a brick block, — each house partaking of the warmth of all the rest, besides the sultriness of its individual fur- nace-heat. But, towards noon, there had come snow, driven along the street by a nortrheasterly blast, and whitening the roofs and sidewalks with a business-like perseverance that would have done credit to our sever- est January tempest. It set about its task apparently as much in earnest as if it had been guaranteed from a thaw for months to come. The greater, surely, was my heroism, when, puffing out a final whiff of cigar- smoke, I quitted my cosey pair of bachelor-rooms, — with a good fire burning in the gTate, and a closet right at hand, where there was still a bottle or two in the cham23agne-basket, and a residuum of claret in a litted, I say, these comfortable quarters, and plunged^ into the heart of the pitiless snow-storm, in quest of a better life. The better life ! Possibly, it would hardly look so, now ; it is enough if it looked so then. The gTcatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool ; the truest her- oism is to resist the doubt ; and the profoundest wis- dom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed. 332 THE nUTlIEDALE ROMANCE. Yet, after all, let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more i^^gaeiou^ to follow out one's day-dream to its natural consummation, although, if the Aision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be con- summated otherwise than by a failiu'e. And what of that ? Its airiest fragments, impalpable as they may be, will possess a value that lurks not in the most pon- derous realities of any practicable scheme. They are not the rubbish of the mind. Whatever else I may re- pent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny, — yes ! — and to do what in me lay for their accom- plishment ; even to the extent of quitting a warm fire- side, flinging away*a freshly lighted cigar, and travel- ling far beyond the strike of city clocks, through a drifting snow-storm. There were four of us who rode together through the stoim ; and Ilollingsworth, who had agreed to be of the number, was accidentally delayed, and set forth at a later hour alone. As we threaded the streets, I re- member how the buildings on either side seemed to press too closely upon us, insomuch that our mighty hearts found barely room enough to throb between them. The snowfall, too, looked inexpressibly dreary (I had almost called it dingy), coming down through an atmosphere of city smoke, and alighting on the side- walk only to be moulded into the impress of some- body's patched boot or overshoe. Thus the track of an old conventionalism was visible on what was freshest from the sky. But when we left the pavements, and our muffled hoof-tramps beat upon a desolate extent of coimtry road, and were effaced by the unfettered blast as soon as stamped, then there was better air to BLITHEDALE. 333 breathe. Air that had not been breathed once and again ! air that had not been spoken into words of falsehood, formality, and error, like all the air of the dusky city ! " How pleasant it is ! " remarked I, while the snow- flakes flew into my mouth the moment it was opened. " How very mild and balmy is this country air ! " " Ah, Coverdale, don't laugh at what little enthusi- asm you have left ! " said one of my comj)anions. " 1 maintain that this nitrous atmosphere is really exhil- arating ; and, at any rate, we can never call ourselves regenerated men till a February northeaster shall be as gTatefid to us as the softest breeze of June ! " So we all of us took courage, riding fleetly and mer- rily along, by stone fences that were half buried in the wave-like drifts ; and through patches of woodland, where the tree-trunks opposed a snow-incrusted side towards the northeast ; and within ken of deserted vil- las, with no footprints in their avenues ; and passed scattered dwellings, whence puffed the smoke of coun- try fires, strongly impregnated with the pungent aroma of burning peat. Sometimes, encountering a traveller, we shouted a friendly greeting ; and he, unmuffling his ears to the bluster and the snow-spray, and listen- ing eagerly, appeared to think our courtesy worth less than the trouble which it cost him. The churl ! He understood the shrill whistle of the blast, but had no intelligence for our blithe tones of brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy, on the traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens how diffi- ciilt a task we had in hand, for the reformation of the world. We rode on, however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such good companionship with the tempest that, at om* joiu-ney's end, we professed our- 334 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. selves almost loath to bid the rude blusterer good-by. But, to o\\Ti the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began to be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold. And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farm-house, — the same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the beginning of this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out of our hair and beai'ds, and our faces all ablaze, what with the past inclemency and present warmth. It was, indeed, a right good fire that we found await- ing us, built up of great, rough logs, and knotty limbs, and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as far- mers are wont to keep for their own hearths, — since these crooked and unmanageable boughs could never be measured into merchantable cords for the market. A family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their kettle over precisely such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger one ; and, contrasting it with my coal-gi-ate, I felt so much the more that we had transported our- selves a world-wide distance from the system of soci- ety that shackled us at breakfast-time. Good, comfortable Mrs. Foster (the wife of stout Silas Foster, who was to manage the farm, at a fair stipend, and be our tutor in the art of husbandry) bade us a hearty welcome. At her back — a back of generous breadth — appeared two yoimg women, smiling most hospitably, but looking rather awkward withal, as not well knowing what was to be their posi- tion in our new arrangement of the world. We shook hands affectionately all round, and congratulated our- selves that the blessed state of brotherhood and sister- hood, at which we aimed, might fairly be dated from this moment. Our greetings were hardly concluded BLITHEDALE. 335 r. when the door opened, and/Zenobia, — whom I had never before seen, important as was her place in our enterprise, — Zenobia entered the parlor?. This (as the reader, if at all acquainted with our literary biogi'aphy, need scarcely be told) was not her real name. She had assiuned it, in the first instance, as her magazine signature ; and, as it accorded well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady's figure and deportment, they half-laugh- ingly, adopted it in their familiar intercourse with her. She took the appellation in good part, and even en- couraged its constant use ; which, in fact, was thus far appropriate, that our Zenobia, however humble looked her new philosophy, had as much native pride as any queen would have known what to do with. in. A KNOT OF DREAMERS. Zenobia bade us welcome, in a fine, frank, mellow voice, and gave each of us her hand, which was very soft and warm. She had sometliing appropriate, I re- collect, to say to every individual; and what she said to myself was this : — " I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale, and to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which I have learned by heart ; or, rather, it has stolen into my memory, without my exercising any choice or volition about the matter. Of course — permit me to say — you do not tliink of relinquishing an occupation in which you have done yourself so much credit. I woidd ahnost rather give you uj) as an associate, than that the world should lose one of its true poets ! " " Ah, no ; there will not be the slightest danger of that, especially after this inestimable praise from Ze- nobia," said I, smiling, and blushing, no doubt, with excess of pleasure. " I hope, on the contrary, now to produce something that shall really deserve to be called poetry, — true, strong, natiu'al, and sweet, as is the life which we are going to lead, — something that shall have the notes of wild birds twittering through it, or a strain like the wind-anthems in the woods, as the case may be." " Is it irksome to you to hear your own verses 8img?" asked Zenobia, with a gracious smile. " If so, A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 337 I am very sorry, for you will certainly hear me singing them, sometimes, in the summer evenings." " Of all things," answered I, " that is what wiU de- light me most." While this passed, and while she spoke to my com- panions, I was taking note of Zenobia's aspect ; and it impressed itself on me so distinctly, that I can now summon her up, like a ghost, a little wanner than the life, but otherwise identical with it. She was dressed as simply as possible, in an American print (I think the dry-goods people call it so), but with a silken ker- chief, between which and her gown there was one glimpse of a white shoulder. It struck me as a great piece of good fortune that there should be just that glimpse. Her hair, which was dark, glossy, and of singidar abundance, was put up rather soberly and ->, primly, without curls, or other ornament, except ^(^t^/J/f J) giugle flo^r. It was an exotic, of rarebeauty^^and ^ as^i^sh_as if the^hx):yMu^e]^^garcIen^Jtia^ Jus^ clipt it from t^sji^m,. That flower has struck deep root into my memory. I can both see it and smell it, at this moment. So brilliant, so rare, so costly, as it must have been, and yet enduring only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride and pomp which had a luxuriant growth in Zenobia's character than if a great diamond had sparkled among her hair. Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women woidd like to have, or than they could afford to have, though not a whit too large in proportion with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development. It did one good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, although its natural tendency lay in another direc- tion than towards literature) so fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of a woman, just on the VOL. V. 22 838 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. liither verge of her richest maturity, with a combina- tion of features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some fastidious persons might pro- nounce them a little deficient in softness and delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes everywhere. Preferable — by way of variety, at least — was Zeno- bia's bloom, health, and vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man might >vell have fallen in love with her for their sake only. ^ In her quiet moods, she seemed rather indolent; but when really«:ift-^r- nest, particularly if there were a spice of^bitter feel- ing, she grew all alive, to her finger-tips/ "I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile beamed warmth upon us all ; " so I take the j)art of hostess, for to-day, and welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at supper. To-morrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and begin our new life from day- break." " Have we our various parts assigned ? " asked some one. " Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia^ with her mellow, almost broad laugh, — most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an ordinary woman's laugh, — "we women (there are four of us here al- ready) will take the domestic and in-door part of the business, as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew, — to wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep, — and, at our idler intervals, to repose our- selves on knitting and sewing, — these, I suppose, must be feminine occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual adaptations be- gin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to take our places in the kitchen." A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 339 "What a pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the house-work generally, cannot be left out of our sys- tem altogether ! / It is odd enough that the kind of labor which f allsM;o the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life — the life of degen- erated mortals — from the life of Paradise, j Eve had no dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, apd no wash- ing-day." " I am afraid," said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, " we shall find some difficulty in adopt- ing the paradisiacal system for at least a month to come. Look at that snow-drift sweeping past the window ! Ai'e there any figs ripe, do you think ? Have the pine-apples been gathered to-day ? Would you like a bread-fruit, or a cocoa-nut ? Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No no, Mr. Cover- dale ; the only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out of a green-house this morning. As for the garb of Eden," added she, shivering play- fully, " I shall not assume it till after May-day ! " Assuredly, Zenobia could not have intended it, — the fault must have been entirely in my imagination. But these last words, together with something in her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture of that fine, perfectly developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her free, careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite decorous when born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I im- puted it, at that time, to Zenobia's noble courage, con- scious of no harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the life and color out of other women's conversation. There was another peculiarity about her. We seldom meet with women nowadays, and in 340 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. this coimtry, who impress us as being women at all, — their sex fades away, and goes for nothing, in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an in- fluence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come from Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam, saying, " Behold ! here is a woman ! " Not that I would convey the idea of especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm and rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to have been refined away out of y the feminine system. "And now,". continued Zenobia, "I must go and help get supper. Do you think you can be content, instead of figs, pine-apples, and all the other delicacies of Adam's supper-table, with tea and toast, and a cer- tain modest supply of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of a housewife, I brought liither in a bas- ket ? And there shall be bread and milk, too, if the innocence of your taste demands it." The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations, utterly declining our offers to assist, further than by bringing wood, for the kitchen fire, from a huge pile in the back-yard. After heaping up more than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting- room, drew our chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects. Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster, lank, stalwart, uncouth^ and gi-isly-bearded. He came from foddering the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a furrow. He greeted us in pietty much the same tone as if he were speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobac- co-box, pulled off his wet cowhide boots, and sat down A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 341 before the fire in his stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments, so that the stout yeoman looked vaporous and spectre-like. " Well, folks," remarked Silas, " you '11 be wishing yoiu'selves back to town again, if tliis weather holds." And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the twilight fell silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes intermingling themselves with the fast- descending snow. The storm, in its evening aspect, was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our especial behoof, — a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful phantoms that invariably haimt the mind, on the eve of adventurous enterprises, to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life. But our courage did not quail. We woidd not allow ourselves to be depressed by the snow-drift trailing past the window, any more than if it had been the sigh of a summer "svind among rustling boughs. There have been few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men might lawfully dream awake, and give utterance to their wildest visions without dread of lauo^hter or scorn on the part of the audience, — yes, and speak of earthly happiness, for themselves and mankind, as an object to be hopefidly striven for, and probably at- tained, — we who made that little semicircle round the blazing fire were those very men. (We had left the rusty iron f rarhework of society behind us ; we had broken through many hindrances that are powerfid enough to keep most people on the weary tread-mill of the established system, even while they^feel its irk- someness almost as intolerable as we didj We had stepped down from the pulpit ; we had flung aside the pen ; we had shut up the ledger ; we had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, enervating indolence, which is .V. du^ 342 THE BTJTIIEDALE ROMANCE. better, after all, than most of the enjoyments mthin mortal gi'asp. It was our purpose — a generous one, certainly, and absnriL- no doubt, in full proportion with its generosity -f- to give up whatever we had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principh^ on which human society has all along been based. ] And, first^of all, we had divorced oursel:ses^om pricle^nd were styixiiig to supply its pluce^withfamil- iar-4oyfi* We meant to lessen the laboring man's great burden of toil, by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our profit by mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the strong hand from an enemy, or filching it craftUy from those less shrewd than ourselves (if, indeed, there were any such in New England), or winning it by self- ish competition with a neighbor ; in one or another of which fasliions every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil, whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer no less than an effort for the advancement of our race. Therefore, if we buUt splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coads of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it de- served. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime ; or, if so, the rarer and higher is A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 343 the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversa- tion ; but when he did speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance : — " Which man among you," quoth he, " is the best judge of swine ? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a dozen pigs." Pigs ! Good heavens ! had we come out from among the swinish multitude for this ? And, again, in refer- ence to some discussion about raising early vegetables for the market : — " We shall never make any hand at market-garden- ing," said Silas Foster, " unless the women-folks wiU undertake to do all the weeding. We have n't team enough for that and the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city follvs as worth one common field- hand. No, no ; I tell you, we should have to get up a little too early in the morning, to compete with the market-gardeners roimd Boston." It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the pos- sibility of getting the advantage over the outside bar- barians in their own field of labor. But, to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society as large, we stood in a position of new hostility, rather than new brotherhood. Nor could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the bigger and bet- ter half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting so pitiful a minority as now, we were in- evitably estranged from the rest of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual bond amonof ourselves. 344 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner conscionsness by the entrance of Zenobia, She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid (probably by being exposed to the fer- vency of the kitchen fire), she flung it on the floor, as imconcernedly a« a village girl would throw away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her char- acter, although, methought, it wovUd still more have befitted the bovmteous nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand, and to revive "^ - faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless, it was a sin- ^(Aj^^" gular but irresistible effect / the presence of Zenobia ■^ caused our heroic enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a counterfeit Arcadia, in which we gro^vn-up men and women were making a play-day of the years that were given us to live in. I tried to analyze this impression, but not with much success. ] " It really vexes me," observed Zenobia, as we left the room, " that Mr. Hollings worth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him at all the sort of i^erson to be turned back by a jouff of contrary wind, or a few snow-flakes drifting into his face." " Do you know Hollingsworth personally ? " I in- quired. " No ; only as an auditor — auditress, I mean — of some of his lectures," said she. " What a voice he has ! and what a man he is ! Yet not so much an in- tellectual man, I should say, as a gi-eat heart ; at least, he moved me more deej^ly than I think myself capable of being moved, except by the stroke of a true, strong heart against my own. It is a sad pity tliat he should A KNOT OF DREAMERS. 345 have devoted his glorious powers to such a grimy, un- beautiful, and positively hopeless object as this refor- mation of criminals, about which he makes himself^^nd his wretchedly small audiences so very miserable/ To tell you a secret, I never could tolerate a philanthro- pist before. Coidd you ? " ) " By no means," I answered ; " neither can I now." " They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of mortals," continued Zenobia. " I shovdd like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better, if the philanthropy had been left out. At all events, as a mere matter of taste, I wish he would let the bad people alone, and try to benefit those who are not already past his help. Do you suppose he will be content to spend his life, or even a few months of it, among tolerably virtuous and comfortable individuals, like ourselves ? '* " Upon my word, I doubt it," said I. " If we wish to keep him with us, we must systematically commit, at least, one crime ajjiece ! Mere peccadilloes will not satisfy him." Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance upon me ; but, before I coidd make out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen, where, in accordance with the rustic simplicity of our new life, the supper-table was spread. py^^ ,/ The pleasant firelight ! I must still keep harping on it. The kitchen hearth had an old-fashioned breadth, depth, and spaciousness, far within which lay what seemed the butt of a good -sized oak-tree, with the moisture bubbling merrily out at both ends. It was now half an hour beyond dusk. The blaze from an armful of substantial sticks, rendered more combusti- ble by brushwood and pine, flickered powerfully on the smoke-blackened walls, and so cheered our spirits that we cared not what inclemency might rage and roar on the other side of our illuminated windows. A yet sul- trier warmth was bestowed by a goodly quantity of peat, wliich was crumbling to white ashes among the bm-ning brands, and incensed the kitchen mth its not ungrateful fragi'ance. The exuberance of this house- hold fire woidd alone have sufficed to besj3eak us no true farmers; for the New England yeoman, if he have the misfortune to dwell within practicable dis- tance of a wood-market, is as niggardly of each stick as if it were a bar of California gold. But it was fortunate for us, on that wintry eve of our untried life, to enjoy the warm and radiant lux- ury of a somewhat too abundant fire. If it served no other purpose, it made the men look so fuU of youth, warm blood, and hope, and the women — such of them, THE SUPPER-TABLE. 347 at least, as were anywise convertible by its magic — so very beautiful, that I would clie made no scruple of oversetting all human institutions, and scattering them as with a breeze from her fan. A female reformer, in her attacks upon society, has an instinctive sense of where the life lies, and is in- clined to aim directly at that spot. Especially the relation between the sexes is naturally among the ear. liest to attract her notice. Zenobia was truly a. magnificent woman. The homely simplicity of her dress could not conceal, nor scarcely diminish, the queenliness of her presence. The image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. Th^-»taga-'WouldJja3i^j3ee^J;er proj^ sphfiig. She sliould have made it a point_iif^dutyjmOTeoyeri_to srt'endiesslyto paiirters^anS^ulptors, and preferably to the latter^_becauseJiie^old_decorui^^^ the marble ^voul(tjCDjisist3ith_thejiJrapst scantiness ofdr^pery, so tliatihe eye might chastely Be gladdened with her material- perfectianan''its entireness. I know not well how to express, that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh -warmth over her round [arms, and what was visible of her full bust, — in a word, her womanliness incarnated, — compelled me sometimes to close my eyes, as if it were not quite the privilege of modesty to gaze at her. Illness and exhaustion, no doubt, had made me morbidly sensitive. I noticed — and wondered how Zenobia contrived it — that she had always a new flower in her hair. And still it was a hot-house flower, — an outlandish flower, — a flower of the tropics, such as appeared to have sprmig passionately out of a soil the very weeds oi" which woidd be fervid and spicy. Uidike as was the flower of each successive day to the preceding COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER. 371 one, it yet so assimilated its richness to the rich beauty of the woman, that I thought it the only flower fit to be worn ; so fit, indeed, that Nature had evidently created this floral gem, in a happy exuberance, for the one purpose of worthily adorning Zenobia's head. It might be that my feverish fantasies clustered them- selves about this peculiarity, and caused it to look more gorgeous and wonderfid than if beheld with temperate eyes. In the height of my iUness, as I well recollect, I went so far as to pronounce it preternatural, " Zenobia is an enchantress ! " whispered I once to HoUingsworth. " She is a sister of the Veiled Lady. That flower in her hair is a talisman. If you were to snatch it away, she would vanish, or be transformed into something else." " What does he say ? " asked Zenobia. " Nothing that has an atom of sense in it," answered HoUingsworth. " He is a little beside himself, I be- lieve, and talks about your being a witch, and of some magical property in the flower that you wear in your hair." " It is an idea worthy of a feverish poet," said she, laughing rather compassionately, and taking out the flower. "I scorn to owe anytliing to magic. Here, Mr. HoUingsworth, you may keep the speU whUe it has any virtue in it ; but I cannot promise you not to , appear with a new one to-morrow. It is the one relic of my more brUliant, my happier days ! " The most curious part of the matter was, that long after my slight delirium had passed away, — as long, indeed, as I continued to know this remarkable woman, — her daily flower affected my imagination, though more slightly, yet in very much the same way. The reason must have been that, whether intentionally on 372 THE BLTTHEDALE ROMANCE. her part or not, this favorite ornament was actually a subtile expression of Zenobia's character. One subject, about which — very impertinently, moreover — I pei-plexed myself with a great many con- jectures, was, whether Zenobia had ever been married. The idea, it must be undeistood, was unauthorized by any circumstance or suggestion that had made its way to my ears. So young as I beheld her, and the freshest and rosiest woman of a thousand, there was certainly no need of imputing to her a destiny already accomplished ; the probability was far greater that her coming years had all life's richest gifts to bring. If the great event of a woman's existence had been consummated, the world knew nothing of it, although the world seemed to know Zenobia well. It was a ridiculous piece of ro- mance, undoubtedly, to imagine that this beautiful per- sonage, wealthy as she was, and holding a position that might fairly enough be called disting-uished, could have given herself away so privately, but that some whisper and suspicion, and, by degrees, a full understanding of the fact, woidd eventually be blo^\^l abroad. But then, as I failed not to consider, her original home was at a distance of many hundred miles. Rumors might fill the social atmosphere, or might once have filled it, there, which would travel but slowly, against the wind, towards our Northeastern metropolis, and perhaps melt into thin air before reaching it. There was not — and I distinctly repeat it — the slightest foundation in my knowledge foi- any surmise of the kind. But there is a species of intuition, — cither a spiritual lie, or the subtile recognition of a fact, — which comes to us in a reduced state of the corporeal system. The soul gets the better of the body, after wasting illness, or when a vegetable diet may COVERDALE'S SICK-CHAMBER. 373 have mingled too much ether in the blood. Vapors then rise uji to the brain, and take shapes that often image falsehood, but sometimes truth. The spheres of oiu' companions have, at such periods, a vastly greater influence upon our own than when robust health gives us a repellent and seK-defensive energy. Zenobia's sphere, I imagine, impressed itself powerfully on mine, and transformed me, during this period of my weak- ness, into something like a raesmerical clairvoyant. Then, also, as anybody coidd observe, the freedom of her deportment (though, to some tastes, it might commend itself as the utmost perfection of manner in a youthf id \\ddow or a blooming matron) was not ex- actly maiden-like. What girl had ever laughed as Ze- nobia did ? What girl had ever spoken in her mellow tones? Her unconstrained and ine\dtable manifesta- tion, I said often to myself, was that of a woman to whom wedlock had thrown wide the gates of mystery. Yet sometimes I strove to be ashamed of these conjec- tures. I acknowledged it as a masculine grossness — a sin of wicked interpretation, of which man is often guilty towards the other sex — thus to mistake the sweet, liberal, but womanly frankness of a noble and generous disposition. Still, it was of no avail to rea- son with myself nor to upbraid myseK. Pertinaciously the thought, " Zenobia is a wife ; Zenobia has lived and loved ! There is no folded petal, no latent dew- drop, in this perfectly developed rose I " — irresistibly that thought drove out all other conclusions, as often as my mind reverted to the subject. Zenobia was conscious of my observation, though not, I f)resume, of the point to which it led me. " Mr. Coverdale," said she one day, as she saw me watching her, while she arranged my gruel on the 374 THE BLITHEDALE RO^rANCK. t;il)le, I have been exposed to a great deal of eye-shot in the few years of my mixing in the workl, but never, I think, to precisely such glances as you are in the habit of favoring me ^Wth. I seem to interest you very much ; and yet — or else a woman's instinct is for once deceived — I cannot reckon you as an admirer. What are you seeking to discover in me ? " " The mystery of your life," answered I, surprised into the truth by the imexpectedness of her attack. " And you will never tell me." She bent her head towards me, and let me look into her eyes, as if, challenging me to drop a plummet-line down into the depths of her consciousness. " I see nothing now," said I, closing my own eyes, " unless it be the face of a sprite laughing at me fiom the bottom of a deep well." A baclielor always feels liimseK defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away. Otherwise, the matter could have been no concern of mine. It was purely specida- tive, for I should not, under any circumstances, have fallen in love with Zenobia. The riddle made me so nervous, however, in my sensitive condition of mind and body, that I most ungratefully began to wish that she would let me alone. Then, too, her gruel was very wretched stuff, with almost invariably the smell of pine smoke upon it, like the evil taste that is said to mix itself up with a witch's best concocted dainties. Why could not she have allowed one of the other women to take the gruel in charge ? Whatever else might be her gifts, Nature certainly never intended Zenobia for a cook. Or, if so, she should have med- dled only with the richest and spiciest dishes, and such as are to be tasted at banquets, between di'aughts of intoxicating wine. vn THE CONVALESCENT. As soon as my incommoclities allowed me to think of past occurrences, I failed not to inquire what had become of the odd little guest whom Hollingsworth had been the medium of introducing; among; us. It now appeared that poor Priscilla had not so literally fallen out of the clouds, as we were at first inclined to sujopose. A letter, wliich should have introduced her, had since been received from one of the cit}^ mission- aries, containing" a certificate of character, and an al- lusion to circumstances which, in the writer's judg- ment, made it especially desirable that she should find shelter in our Community. There was a hint, not very intelligible, implying either that Priscilla had re- cently escaped from some particidar peril or irksome- ness of position, or else that she was still liable to this danger or difficulty, whatever it might be. We should ill have deserved the reputation of a benevolent frater- nity, had we hesitated to entertain a petitioner in such need, and so strongly recommended to our kindness ; not to mention, moreover, that the strange maiden had set herself diligently to work, and was doing good service with her needle. But a slight mist of uncer- tainty still floated about Priscilla, and kept her, as yet, from taking a very decided place among creatures of flesh and blood. The mysterious attraction, which, from her first en- 376 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. trance on our scone, she evinced foi- Zenobia, had lost nothing of its force. I often heard her footsteps, soft and low, accomjianying the light hut decided tread of the latter up the staircase, stealing along the pas- sage-way by her new friend's side, and pausing while Zenobia entered my chamber. Occasionally, Zenobia would be a little annoyed by Priscilla's too close at- tendance. In an authoritative and not very kindly tone, she would ad\dse her to breathe the pleasant air in a walk, or to go with her work into the barn, hold- ing out half a promise to come and sit on the hay with her, when at leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found but scanty requital for her love. HoUingsworth was like- wise a great favorite with her. For several minutes together, sometimes, while my auditory nerves re- tained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, pleasant murmur, ascending from the room below ; and at last ascertained it to be Pris- cilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to HoUings- worth. She talked more largely and freely with him than with Zenobia, towards whom, indeed, her feel- ings seemed not so much to be confidence as involun- tary affection. I should have thought all the better of my own qualities had Priscilla marked me out for the third place in her regards. But, though she ap- peared to like me tolerably well, I could never flatter myself with being distinguished by her as HoUings- worth and Zenobia were. One forenoon, during my convalescence, there came a gentle tap at my chamber-door. I immediately said, " Come in, Priscilla ! " with an acute sense of the ap- plicant's identity. Nor was I deceived. It was really Priscilla, — a pale, large - eyed little woman (for she had gone far enough into her teens to be, at least, on THE CONVALESCENT. 377 the outer limit o£ girlliood), but much less wan than at my previous view of her, and far better conditioned both as to health and spirits. As I first saw her, she had reminded me of plants that one sometimes ob- serves doing- their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court, where there is scanty soil, and never any sunshine. At present, though with no ap- proach to bloom, there were indications that the girl had human blood in her veins. Priscilla came softly to my bedside, and held out an article of snow-white linen, very carefully and smoothly ironed. She did not seem bashful, nor anywise em- barrassed. My weakly condition, I suppose, supplied a medium in which she could approach me. "Do not you need this?" asked she. "I have made it for you." It was a nightcap ! " My dear Priscilla," said I, smiling, " I never had on a nightcap in my life ! But perhaps it will be bet- ter for me to wear one, now that I am a miserable invalid. How admirably you have done it ! No, no ; I never can think of wearing such an exquisitely wrought nightcap as this, unless it be in the daytime, when I sit up to receive company." " It is for use, not beauty," answered Priscilla. " I could have embroidered it, and made it much prettier, if I pleased." While holding up the nightcap, and admiring the fine needlework, I perceived that Priscilla had a sealed letter, which she was waiting for me to take. It had arrived from the village post-office that morning. As I did not immediately offer to receive the letter, she drew it back, and held it against her bosom, with both hands clasped over it, in a way that had probably 378 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. grown habitual to her. Now, on turning- my eyes from the nightcap to Priscilhi, it forcibly struck me that her air, though not her figure, and the expression of her face, but not its features, had a resemblance to what I had often seen in a friend of mine, one of the most gifted women of the age. I cannot describe it. The points easiest to convey to the reader were, a cer- tain curve of the shoidders, and a partial closing of the eyes, which seemed to look more penetratingly into my own eyes, tlu-ough the narrowed apertures, than if they had been open at full width. It was a singidar anomaly of likeness coexisting with perfect dissimilitnde. " Will you give me the letter, Priscilla ? " said I. She started, put the letter into my hand, and quite lost the look that had dra\\Ti my notice. " Priscilla," I inquired, " did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller ? " " No," she answered. " Because," said I, " you reminded me of her, just now ; and it happens, strangely enough, that this very letter is from her." Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very much discomposed. " I wish people would not fancy such odd things in me ! " she said, rather petidantly. " How coidd I possibly make myself resemble this lady, merely by holding her letter in my hand ? " " Certainly, Priscilla, it woidd puzzle me to explain it," I replied ; " nor do I suppose that the letter had anything to do with it. It was just a coincidence, nothing more." She hastened out of the room, and this was the last that I saw of Priscilla until I ceased to be an invalid. THE CONVALESCENT. 379 Being much aloue, during my recovery, I read inter- minably in Mr. Emerson's Essays, " The Dial," Car- lyle's works, George Sand's romances (lent me by Ze- nobia), and other books which one or another of the bretlu-en or sisterhood had brought with them. Agree- ing in little else, most of these utterances were like the cry of some solitary sentinel, whose station was on the outposts of the advance-guard of human progression ; or, sometimes, the voice came sadly from among the shattered ruins of the past, but yet had a hopefid echo in the future. They were well adapted (better, at least, than any other intellectual products, the volatile essence of which had heretofore tinctiu-ed a printed page) to pilgrims like ourselves, whose present biv- ouac was considerably further into the waste of chaos than any mortal army of crusaders had ever marched before. Fourier's works, also, in a series of horribly tedious volumes, attracted a good deal of my attention, from the analogy which I could not but recognize be- tween his system and our owti. There was far less resemblance, it is true, than the world chose to im- agine, inasmuch as the two theories differed, as "svidely as the zenith from the nadir, in their main principles. I talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth, and trans- lated, for his benefit, some of the passages that cliiefly impressed me. " When, as a consequence of hiunan improvement," said I, " the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particidar kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade a cedre. It is positively a fact ! Just imagine the city-docks filled, every day, with a flood-tide of this delectable bever- age!" 380 I'lIE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. " Why did not the Frenchman make punch of it, at once ? "' asked Ilollingsworth. " The jack-tars would be delighted to go down in sliips and do business in such an element." I further proceeded to explain, as well as I modestly could, several points of Fourier's system, illustrating them ^^'ith here and there a page or two, and asking Hollingsworth's opinion as to the expediency of intro- ducing these beautiful pecidiarities into our own prac- tice. " Let me hear no more of it ! " cried he, in utter disgust. " I never will forgive this fellow ! He has conunitted the uniiardonable sin ; for what more mon- strous iniqiuty coidd the Devil himself contrive than to choose the selfish principle, — the principle of all human wrong, the very blackness of man's heart, the portion of ourselves which we shudder at, and which it is the whole aim of spiritual discipline to eradicate, — to choose it as the master- workman of his system ? To seize upon and foster whatever ^'ile, petty, sordid, filthy, bestial, and abominable corruptions have can- kered into our nature^Jo^Jb^^ the efficient instnunents of his infernal regeneration! And his consummated Paradise, as he pictures it, woidd be worthy of the agency which he counts ujjon for establishing it. The nauseous villain ! " " Nevertheless," remarked I, " in consideration of the promised delights of his system, — so very proper, as they certaiidy are, to be appreciated by Fourier's countrymen, — I cannot but wonder that universal France did not adopt his theory, at a moment's warn- ing. But is there not something very characteristic of his nation in Fourier's manner of putting forth hLs views ? He makes no claim to inspiration. He has THE CONVALESCENT. 381 not persuaded himself — as Swedenborg did, and as any other than a Frenchman would, with a mission of like importance to communicate — that he speaks \vith authoritj^ from above. He promidgates his system, so far as I can perceive, entirely on his own responsibil- ity. He has searched out and discovered the whole counsel of the Almighty, in respect to mankind, past, present, and for exactly seventy thousand years to come, by the mere force and cunning of his individ- ual intellect ! " " Take the book out of my sight," said Hollings- worth, with great viridence of expression, " or, I tell you fairly, I shall fling it in the fire ! And as for Fourier, let him make a Paradise, if he can, of Ge- henna, where, as I conscientiously believe, he is floun- dering at this moment ! " " Aud bellowing, I suppose," said I, — not that I felt any ill-\\all towards Fourier, but merely wanted to give the finishing touch to Hollingsworth's image, — " bellowing for the least drop of his beloved limonade a cedre ! " There is but little profit to be expected in attempt>- ing to argiie with a man who allows himself to declaim in this manner ; so I dropt the subject, and never took it up again. But had the system at which he was so enraged combined almost any amount of human wisdom, spirit- ual insight, and imaginative beauty, I question whether HoUmgs worth's mind was in a fit condition to receive it. I began to discern that he had come among us actuated by no real sympathy with our feelings and our hopes, but chiefly because we were estranging our- selves from the world, with which his lonely and ex- clusive object in life had already put him at odds. 382 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. Hollingswoith must have been originally endowed Avdtli a great spirit of benevolence, deep enough and warm enough to be the source of as much disinter- ested good as Providence often allows a human being the privilege of conferring upon his fellows. This native instinct yet lived within hmi. I myself had profited by it, in my necessity. It was seen, too, in his treatment of Priscilla. Such casual circumstances as were here involved would quicken his divine power of sympathy, and make him seem, while their influ- ence lasted, the tenderest man and the truest friend on earth. But,, by and by, you missed the tenderness of yesterday, and gTew drearily conscious that Hol- lingsworth had a closer friend than ever you could be ; and this friend was the cold, spectral monster which he had himself conjured up, and on which he was wasting all the warmth of his heart, and of which, at last, — as these men of a mighty purpose so invariably do, — he had gTown to be the bond-slave. It was his philan- thropic theory. This was a result exceedingly sad to contemplate, considering that it had been mainly brought about by the very ardor and exuberance of his philanthropy. Sad, indeed, but by no means unusual : he had taught his benevolence to pour its warm tide exclusively through one channel ; so that there was nothing to spare for other great manisfestations of love to man, nor scarcely for the nutriment of individual attach- ments, unless they coidd minister, in some way, to the terrible egotism which he mistook for an angel of God. Had Hollingsworth's education been more enlarged, he might not so inevitably have stumbled into this pitfall. But tliis identical pursuit had educated him. He knew absolutely nothing, except in a single diree- THE CONVALESCENT. 383 tion, where he had thought so energetically, and felt to such a depth, that, no doubt, the entire reason and justice of the universe appeared to be concentrated thitherward. It is my private opinion that, at this period of his life, Hollingsworth was fast going mad ; and, as with other crazy people (among whom I include humorists of every degree), it required all the constancy of friend- ship to restrain liis associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddlmg uj)on one string, — such multiform presentation of one idea ! His specific object (of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware, through the medium of lectures and pamphlets) was to obtain funds for the construc- tion of an edifice, with a sort of collegiate endowment. On this foundation, he purposed to devote himself and a few disciples to the reform and mental culture of our criminal brethren. His visionary edifice was Hollings- worth's one castle in the air ; it was the material type in which his philanthropic dream strove to embody itself ; and he made the scheme more definite, and caught hold of it the more strongly, and kept liis clutch the more pertinaciously, by rendering it visible to the bodily eye. I have seen him, a hundred times, with a pencil and sheet of paper, sketching the facade, the side-view, or the rear of the structiu'e, or planning the internal arrangements, as lovingly as another man might plan those of the projected home where he meant to be happy with his wife and cliildren. I have known him to begin a model of the building with little stones, gathered at the brook - side, whither we had gone to cool ourselves in the sultry noon of haying-time. Un- like all other ghosts, his spirit haunted an edifice, which, instead of being tune-worn, and full of storied 384 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. love, and joy, and sorrow, had never yet come into existence. " Dear friend," said I, once, to Hollings worth, be- fore leaving' my siek-chamber, " I heartily wish that 1 could make your schemes my schemes, because it would be so great a happiness to find myself treading the same path with you. But I am afraid there is not stuff in me stern enough for a pliilauthropist, — or not in this peculiar direction, — or, at all events, not solely in this. Can you bear with me, if such should prove to be the case ? " "I will at least wait awhile," answered Hollings- worth, gazing at me sternly and gloomily. " But how can you be my life-long friend, except you strive with me towards the great object of my life ? " Heaven forgive me ! A horrible suspicion crept into my heart, and stimg the very core of it as with the fangs of an adder. I wondered whether it were possible that HoUingsworth could have watched by my bedside, with all that devoted care, only for the idte- rior purpose of making me a proselyte to his views ! VIII. A MODERN ARCADIA. Mat-Day — I forget whether by Zenobia's sole de- cree, or by the unanimous vote of om* community — had been declared a movable festival. It was de- ferred until the sim should have had a reasonable time to clear away the snow-drifts along the lee of the stone walls, and bring out a few of the readiest wild- flowers. On the forenoon of the substituted day, after admitting some of the balmy air into my chamber, I decided that it was nonsense and effeminacy to keep myself a prisoner any longer. So I descended to the sitting-room, and finding nobody there, proceeded to the barn, whence I had already heard Zenobia's voice, and along with it a girlish laugh, which was not so cer- tainly recognizable. Arriving at the spot it a little surprised me to discover that these merry outbreaks came from Priscilla. The two had been a-maying together. They had found anemones in abundance, houstonias by the hand- ful, some colmnbines, a few long-stalked violets, and a quantity of white everlasting-flowers, and had filled up their basket with the delicate spray of shrubs and trees. None were prettier than the maple -twigs, the leaf of which looks like a scarlet bud in May, and like a plate of vegetable gold in October. Zenobia, who showed no conscience in such matters, had also rifled a cherry-tree of one of its blossomed boughs, VOL. V. 25 386 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. and, ^^^tll all this variety of sylvau ornament, had been decking out Priscilla. Being done with a good deal of taste, it made her look more charming than I should have thought possible, with my recollection of the wan, frost-nipt girl, as heretofore described. Nev- ertlieless, among those fragrant blossoms, and conspic- uously, too, had been stuck a weed of evil odor and ugly aspect, which, as soon as I detected it, destroyed the effect of all the rest. There was a gleam of latent mischief — not to call it deviltry — in Zenobia's eye, which seemed to indicate a slightly malicious purjjose in the arrangement. As for herself, she scorned the rural buds and leaf- lets, and wore nothing but her invariable flower of the tropics. " What do you think of Priscilla now, Mr. Cover- dale?" asked she, surveying her as a child does its doll. "Is not she worth a verse or two ? " " There is only one thing amiss," answered I. Zenobia laughed, and flung the malignant weed away. " Yes 1 she deserves some verses now," said I, "and from a better poet than myself. She is the very pic- ture of the New England spring; subdued in tint, and rather cool, but \vith a capacity of sunshine, and bringing us a few Alpine blossoms, as earnest of sonie- tliing richer, though hardly more beautiful, hereafter. The best type of her is one of those anemones." " What I find most singular in Priscilla, as her health improves," observed Zenobia, " is her wildness. Such a quiet little body as she seemed, one woidd not have expected that. Why, as we strolled the woods together, I could hardly keep her from scrambling up the trees, like a squirrel. She has never before known A MODERN ARCADIA. 387 what It is to live in the free air, and so it intoxicates her as if she were sipping wine. And she thinks it such a paradise here, and all of us, particularly Mr. HoUingsworth and myself, such angels ! It is quite ridiculous, and provokes one's malice, almost, to see a creature so happy — especially a feminine creature." " They are always happier than male creatures," said I. "You must correct that opinion, Mr. Coverdale," replied Zenobia contemptuously, " or I shall think you lack the poetic insight. Did you ever see a happy woman in your life ? Of course, I do not mean a girl, like Priscilla, and a thousand others, — for they are all alike, while on the sunny side of experience, — but a grown woman. How can she be happy, after discov- ering that fate has assigned her but one single event, which she must contrive to make the substance of her whole life? A man has his choice of innmnerable events." " A woman, I suppose," answered I, " by constant repetition of her one event, may compensate for the lack of variety." " Indeed ! " said Zenobia. While we were talking, Priscilla caught sight of HoUingsworth, at a distance, in a blue frock, and mth a hoe over his shoidder, returning from the field. She immediately set out to meet him, running and skipping, %vith spirits as light as the breeze of the May morning, but with limbs too little exercised to be quite respon- sive ; she clapped her hands, too, with great exuber- ance of gesture, as is the custom of young girls when their electricity overcharges them. But, all at once, midway to HoUingsworth, she paused, looked round about her, towards the river, the road, the woods, and 388 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. biu'k towards us, ai)i)('aiing to listen, as if slie heard some one calling her name, and knew not precisely in what direction. " Have yon bewitched her ? " I exclaimed. " It is no sorcery of mine," said Zenobia ; " but I have seen the girl do that identical thing once or twice before. Can you imagine what is the matter with her?" " No : unless," said I, " she has the gift of hearing those ' airy tongues that syllable men's names,' which Milton tells about." From whatever cause, Priscilla's animation seemed entirely to have deserted her. She seated herself on a rock, and remained there until Hollingsworth came up ; and when he took her hand and led her back to us, she rather resembled my original image of the wan and spiritless Priscilla than the flowery May-queen of a few moments ago. These sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by an extreme nervous sus- ceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl, though with diminished frequency as her health pro- gressively grew more robust. I was now on my legs again. My fit of illness had been an avenue between two existences ; the low-arched and darksome doorway, through which I crept out of a life of old conventionalisms, on my hands and knees, as it were, and gained admittance into the freer region that lay beyond. In this respect, it was like death. And, as with death, too, it was good to have gone through it. No otherwise coiUd I have rid myself of a thousand follies, fripperies, prejudices, habits, and other such worldly dust as inevitably settles upon the crowd along the broad highway, giving them all one sordid aspect before noon-time, however freshly they A MODERN ARCADIA. 389 may have begun their pilgTuiiage in the dewy morn- ing. The very substance upon my bones had not been fit to live with in any better, truer, or more energetic mode than that to which I was accustomed. So it was taken off me and flung aside, like any other worn-out or unseasonable garment ; and, after shivering a little while in my skeleton, I began to be clothed anew, and much more satisfactorily than in my previous suit. In literal and physical truth, I was quite another man. I had a lively sense of the exidtation with which the spirit will enter on the next stage of its eternal prog- ress after leaving the heavy burden of its mortality in an early grave, with as little concern for what maj'^ be- come of it as now affected me for the flesh which I had lost. Emerging into the genial sunshine, I haK fancied that the labors of the brotherhood had already realized some of Fourier's predictions. Their enlightened cid- ture of the soil, and the \artues with which they sanc- tified their life, had begun to produce an effect upon the material world and its climate. In my new enthu- siasm, man looked strong and stately, — and woman, oh how beautif id I — and the earth a green garden, blossoming wdth many-colored delights. Thus Nature, whose laws I had broken in various artificial ways, comported herself towards me as a strict but lo\dng mother, who uses the rod upon her little boy for his naughtiness, and then gives him a smile, a kiss, and some pretty playthings to console the urchin for her severity. In the interval of my seclusion, there had been a number of recruits to our little army of saints and martyrs. They were mostly individuals who had gone through such an experience as to disgust them with 390 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as to lose their faith in the bet- ter time to come. On comparing their minds one with another they often discovered that this idea of a Com- munity had been growing- up, in silent and miknown sympathy, for years. Thoughtful, strongly lined faces were among them ; sombre brows, but eyes that did not require spectacles, imless prematurely dimmed by the student's lamplight, and hair that seldom showed a thread of silver. Age, wedded to the past, incrusted over with a stony layer of habits, and retaining noth- ing fluid in its possibilities, would have been absurdly out of place in an enterprise like this. Youth, too, in its early dawn, was hardly more adapted to our pur- pose ; for it would behold the morning radiance of its own spirit beaming over the very same spots of with- ered grass and barren sand whence most of us had seen it vanish. We had very young people with us, it is true, — downy lads, rosy gilds in their first teens, and cliildren of all heights above one's knee ; but these had chiefly been sent hither for education, which it was one of the objects and methods of our institution to supply. Then we had boarders, from to^^^l and else- where, who lived with us in a familiar way, sympa- thized more or less in oiu- theories, and sometimes shared in our labors. On the whole, it was a society such as has seldom met together ; nor, perhaps, coidd it reasonably be ex- pected to hold together long. Persons of marked in- dividuality — crooked sticks, as some of us might be called — are not exactly the easiest to bind up into a fagot. But, so long as our luiion should subsist, a man of intellect and feeling, wath a free natm-e in him, mig^ht have souoht far and near without findinjr so A MODERN ARCADIA. ' 391 many points of attraction as would allure him hither- ward. We were of all creeds and opinions, and gen- erally tolerant of all, on every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems to me, was not affirmative, but neg- ative. We had individually foimd one thing or an- other to quarrel with in our past life, and were pretty well agreed as to the inexpediency of lumbering along with the old system any further. As to what should be substituted, there was much less imanimity. We did not greatly care — at least, I never did — for the written constitution under which our millennium had commenced. My hope was, that, between theory and practice, a true and available mode of life might be struck out ; and that, even should we ultimately fail, the months or years spent in the trial would not have been wasted, either as regarded passing enjoyment, or the experience which makes men wise. Arcadians though we were, our costume bore no resemblance to the beribboned doublets, silk breeches and stockings, and slippers fastened with artificial roses, that distinguish the pastoral people of poetry and the stage. In outward show, I hmnbly conceive, we looked rather like a gang of beggars, or banditti, than either a company of honest laboring-men, or a Conclave of philosophers. Whatever might be our points of difference, we all of us seemed to have come to Blithedale with the one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out our old clothes. Such garments as had an airing, whenever we strode afield ! Coats with high collars and with no collars, broad-skirted or swal- low-tailed, and with the waist at every point between the hip and arm-pit ; pantaloons of a dozen successive epochs, and greatly defaced at the knees by the humil- iations of the wearer before his lady-love, — in short, 392 THE BUTHEDALE ROMANCE. we were ii living epitome of defunct fashions, and the veiy raggedest presentment of men who had seen bet- ter days. It was gentility in tatters. Often retain- ing a scholarlike or clerical air, you might have taken us for the denizens of Grub Street, intent on getting a comfortable livelihood by agricidtural labor ; or, Cole- ridge's projected Pantisocracy in full experiment ; or, Candide and his motley associates at work in their cabbage-garden ; or anything else that was miserably out at elbows, and most clumsily j)atclied in the rear. We might have been sworn comrades to Falstaff's ragged regiment. Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry, every mother's sou of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow. And the worst of the matter was, that the first ener- getic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labor was sure to put a finish to these poor habili- ments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil, — "ylra nvchis ; sere nudus,^^ — which as Si- las Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, woidd be apt to astonish the women-folks. After a reasonable training, the yeoman life throve well with us. Our faces took the sunburn kindly ; our chests gained in compass, and our shoidders in breadth and squareness ; our great brown fists looked as if they had never been capable of kid gloves. The plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the hay-fork grew familiar to our grasp. The oxen responded to our voices. We could do almost as fair a day's work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly after it, and awake at daybreak with only a little stiffness of the joints, which was usually quite gone by breakfast-time. A MODERN ARCADIA. 393 To be sure, our next neighbors pretended to be in- credulous as to our real proficiency in the business which we had taken in hand. They told slanderous fables about our inability to yoke our own oxen, or to drive them afield when yoked, or to release the poor brutes from their conjugal bond at nightfall. They had the face to say, too, that the cows laughed at our awkwardness at milking-time, and invariably kicked over the pails ; j)artly in consequence of oiu- putting the stool on the wrong side, and partly because, taking offence at the whisking of their tails, we were in the habit of holding these natural fly-flappers with one hand and milking with the other. They further averred that we hoed up whole acres of Indian corn and other crops, and drew the earth carefully about the weeds ; and that we raised five hundred tuf ts> of burdock, mistak- ing them for cabbages ; and that, by dint of unskilful planting few of our seeds ever came up at all, or, if they did come up it was stern-foremost ; and that we spent the better part of the month of June in revers- ing a field of beans, which had thrust themselves out of the ground in this unseemly way. They quoted it as nothing more than an ordinary occurrence for one or other of us to crop off two or three fingers, of a morn- ing, by our clumsy use of the hay-cutter. Finally, and as an ultimate catastrophe, these mendacious rogues circulated a report that we communitarians were exter- minated, to the last man, by severing ourselves asun- der, with the sweep of our own scythes ! — and that the world had lost nothing by this little accident. But this was pure envy and malice on the part of the neighboring farmers. The peril of our new way of life was not lest we shoidd fail in becoming practical agricidturists, but that we shoidd probably cease to be 394 Tin: BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. anything else. While our enterprise lay all in theory, we had pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the spiritualization of labor. It was to be our form of prayer and ceremonial of worship. Each stroke of the hoe was to uncover some aromatic root of wisdom, heretofore liidden from the sun. Pausing in the field, to let the wind exhale the moisture from our fore- heads, we were to look ujjward, and catch glimpses into the far-off soid of truth. In this point of view, matters did not turn out quite so well as we antici- pated. It is very true that, sometimes, gazing casually around me, out of the midst of my toU, I used to dis- cern a richer picturesqueness in the visible scene of earth and sky. There was, at such moments, a nov- elty, an unwonted aspect, on the face of Nature, as if she had been taken by surprise and seen at unawares, with no opi^ortunity to put off her real look, and as- sume the mask with which she mysteriously hides her- self from mortals. But this was all. The clods of earth, which we so constantly belabored and tm'ned over and over, were never etherealized into thought. Our thoughts, on the contrary, were fast becoming cloddish. Our labor symbolized nothing, and left us mentally sluggish in the dusk of the evening. Intel- lectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise. The yeoman and the scholar — the yeoman and the man of fmest moral culture, though not the man of sturdiest sense and integrity — are two distinct individuals, and can never be melted or welded into one substance. Zenobia soon saw this truth, and gibed me about it, one evening, as Ilollingsworth and I lay on the grass, after a hard day's work. ^' I am afraid you did not make a song, to-day, while A MODERN ARCADIA. 395 loading tlie hay-cart," said she, " as Burns did, when he was reaping barley." " Bums never made a song in haying-time," I an- swered, very positively. " He was no poet while a farmer, and no farmer while a poet." " And on the whole, which of the two characters do you like best? " asked Zenobia. " For I have an idea that you cannot combine them any better than Burns did. Ah, I see, in my mind's eye, what sort of an indi\ddual you are to be, two or three years hence. Grim Silas Foster is yovu? prototype, with his palm of sole-leather, and his joints of rusty iron (which all through siunmer keep the stiffness of what he calls his winter's rheumatize), and his brain of — I don't know what his brain is made of, unless it be a Savoy cab- bage ; but yours may be cauliflower, as a rather more delicate variety. Your physical man will be trans- muted into salt beef and fried pork, at the rate, I should imagine, of a pound and a half a day : that be- ing about the average which we find necessary in the kitchen. You \v\R make your toilet for the day (still like this delightfid Silas Foster) by rinsing your fin- gers and the front part of your face in a little tin pan of water at the doorstep, and teasing your hair with a wooden pocket-comb before a seven-by-nine-inch look- ing-glass. Your only pastime "will be to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black stump of a pipe." " Pray, spare me ! " cried I. " But the pipe is not Silas's only mode of solacing himself with the weed." " Your literature," continued Zenobia, apparently delighted with her description, " will be the ' Farmer's Almanac ; ' for I observe our friend Foster never gets so far as the newspaper. When you happen to sit do^va, at odd moments, you will fall asleep, and make 396 THE BLITHE DALE ROMAN C?:. nasal proclamation of the fact, as he does ; and inva- riably you must be jogged out of a nap, after supper, by the future Mrs. Coverdale, and persuaded to go regularly to bed. And on Sundays, when you put on a blue coat with brass buttons, you will think of noth- ing else to do, but to go and lounge over the stone walls and rail fences, and stare at the corn growing. And you will look with a knowing eye at oxen, and will have a tendency to clamber over into pigsties, and feel of the hogs, and give a guess how much they will weigh after you shall have stuck and dressed them. Already I have noticed you begin to sj^eak through your nose, and with a drawl. Pray, if you leally did make any i^oetiy to-day, let us hear it in that kind of utterance ! " " Coverdale has given up making verses now," said Hollingsworth, who never had the slightest apprecia- tion of my poetry. " Just think of him penning a sonnet with a fist like that ! There is at least this good in a life of toil, that it takes the nonsense and fancy-work out of a man, and leaves nothing but what truly belongs to him. If a farmer can make poetry at the plough-tail, it nmst be because his nature insists on it; and if that be the case, let him make it, in Heaven's name ! " " And how is it with you ? " asked Zenobia, in a different voice ; for she never laughed at Hollings- worth, as she often did at me. " You, I think, cannot have ceased to live a life of thought and feeling." "I have always been in earnest," answered Hol- lingsworth. " I have hammered thought out of iron, after heating the iron in my heart ! It matters little what my outward toil may be. Were I a slave at the bottom of a mine, I should keep the same purpose, A MODERN ARCADIA. 397 the same faith iii its ultimate accomplishment, that 1 do now. Miles Coverdale is not in earnest, either as a poet or a laborer." " You give me hard measure, Hollingsworth," said I, a little hurt. " I have kept pace with you in the field ; and my bones feel as if I had been in earnest, whatever may be the ease with my brain ! " " I cannot conceive," observed Zenobia, with great emphasis, — and, no doubt, she spoke fairly the feel- ing of the moment, — "I cannot conceive of being so continually as Mr. Coverdale is within the sphere of a strong and noble nature, without being strengthened and ennobled by its influence ! " This amiable remark of the fair Zenobia confirmed me in what I had already begun to suspect, that Hol- lingsworth, like many other illustrious prophets, re- formers, and pliilanthropists, was likely to make at least two proselytes among the women to one among the men. Zenobia and Priscilla ! These, I believe (unless my unworthy self might be reckoned for a tliird), were the only disciples of his mission ; and I sjDcnt a great deal of time, uselessly, in tr;ydng to con- jecture what Hollingsworth meant to do with them — and they with him ! IX. HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. It is not, I a})preliencl, a healthy kind of mental iuijation, to devote ourselves too exclusively to the stndybf indi\'idual men and women. If the person "under examination be one's self, the result is pretty certain to be diseased action of the heart, almost be- fore we can snatch a second glance. Or, if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his pecidiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of com-se, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all, — though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real per- sonage, — may be said to have been created mainly by omselves. Thus, as my conscience has often whispered me, I did Ilollingsworth a great wrong by prying into his character ; and am perhaps doing him as great a one, at this moment, by putting faith in the discoveries which I seemed to make. But I could not help it. Had I loved him less, I might have used him better. He and Zenobia and Priscilla — both for their own sakes and as connected with him — were separated from the rest of the Community, to my miagination, and stood forth as the indices of a problem which it was my business to solve. Other associates had a por- KOLLINGSWORTH, ZEN OBI A, PRISCILLA. 399 tion of my time ; other matters amused me ; passing occurrences carried me along with tliem, while they lasted. But here was the vortex of my meditations, around which they revolved, and whitherward they too continually tended. In the midst of cheerful so- ciety, I had often a feeling of loneliness. For it was impossible not to be sensible that, while these three characters figured so largely on my private theatre, I — though probably reckoned as a friend by all — was at best but a secondary or tertiary personage with either of them. I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been enough expressed. But it impressed me, more and more, that there was a stern and dreadf id peculiarity in this man, such as could not prove otherwise than pernicious to the happiness of those who should be di*awn into too intimate a connection with him. He was not altogether human. There was something else in Hollingsworth besides flesh and blood, and sympathies and affections and celestial spirit. This is always true of those men who have surren- dered themselves to an overriding purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle. When such be- gins to be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wis- dom to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep uo friend, unless he make himself the mirror of their purpose ; they will smite and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if you take the first step mth them, and cannot take the second, and the third, and every other step of their 400 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. terribly strait path. They have an idol to wliich they t'onspcrate themselves high-priest, and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious ; and never once seem to suspect — so cunning- has the Devil been ^^ith them — that this false deity, in whose iron featiu-es, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected upon the surround- ing darkness. And the higher and purer the origi nal object, and the more unselfislily it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike be- nevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism. -i^Of course I am perfectly aware that the above state- ment is exaggerated, in the attempt to make it ade- quate. Professed philanthropists have gone far ; but no originally good man, I presume, ever went quite so far as this. Let the reader abate whatever he deems fit. The paragraph may remain, however, both for its truth and its exaggeration, as strongly expres- sive of the tendencies wliich were really operative in Hollingsworth, and as exemj^lifying the kind of error into wliich my mode of observation was calcidated to lead me. The issue was, that in solitude I often shud- dered at my friend. In my recollection of his dark and impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more liu-id in their light ; the froNvn, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. " He is a man after all," thought I ; " his Mak- HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 401 er's OAvn truest image, a philanthropic man ! — not that steel engine of the Devil's contrivance, a philan- thropist ! " But in my wood-walks, and in my silent chamber, the dark face frowned at me again. When a yovmg girl comes witliin the sphere of such a man, she is as perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the people used to ex230se to a dragon. If I had any duty whatever, in reference to Hollings worth, it was to endeavor to save Priscilla from that kind of personal worship which her sex is generally prone to lavish upon saints and heroes. It often requires but one smile out of the hero's eyes into the girl's or woman's heart, to transform this de- votion, from a sentiment of the highest apjjroval and confidence, into passionate love. Now, Hollingsworth smiled much upon Priscilla, — more than upon any other person. If she thought him beautiful, it was no wonder. I often thought him so, with the expression of tender human care and gentlest sympathy which she alone seemed to have jjower to call out upon his features. Zenobia, I suspect, would have given her eyes, bright as they were, for such a look ; it was the least that our poor Priscilla coidd do, to give her heart for a great many of them. There was the more dan- ger of this, inasmuch as the footing on which we all associated at Blithedale was widely different from that of conventional society. While inclining us to the soft affections of the golden age, it seemed to authorize any individual, of either sex, to fall in love with any other, regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent. Accordingly the tender passion was very rife among us, in various degrees of mildness or virulence, but mostly passing away ^ith the state of things that had given it origin. This was all well VOL. V. 26 402 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. enou<;li ; Lut, for a girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one another in theii- love of a man like Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child's play. Had I been as cold-hearted as I sometimes thought myself, nothing would have interested me more than to witness the play of i)assions that must thus liave been evolved. But, in honest truth, I would really have gone far to save Priscilla, at least, from the catastrophe in which such a drama would be apt to terminate. Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner be- came sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we coidd see Nature shaping out a wo- man before our very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soid and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale, — to-day, it had a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of plaj^ul pa- thos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure. She was very fond of playing witla the other girls out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, almost wo- men grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to HOLLTNGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 403 their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground. Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more untamable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variet}^, breaking continu- ally into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious jjropriety through all. Their steps, their voices, ap- pear free as the wind, but keep consonance wiih a strain of music inaudible to us. Young men and boys, on the other hand, play, according to recog-nized law, old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts. For, young or old, in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute. Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with her head throwTi back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air be- tween that of a bird and a young colt. But Priscilla's peculiar charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and irregidarity with which she ran. Growing up mthout exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs. Setting buoy- antly forth, therefore, as if no rival less swift than At- alanta coidd compete with her, she ran f alteringly, and often tumbled on the grass. Such an incident — though it seems too slight to think of — was a thing to laugh at, but which brought the water into one's eyes, and lingered in the memory after far greater joys and sor- rows were wept out of it, as antiquated trash. Pris- cilla's life, as I beheld it, was full of trifles that af- fected me in just this way. When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any other girl in the 404 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. Community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, in a very gruff voice, tlueatenmg to rivet three horse- shoes rouutl Priscilla's neck autl chain her to a post, because she, with some other young people, had clam- bered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew ; but very soon afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's waist, swingmg her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the oxen, to take her fu'st lessons in riding. She met with terrible mis- haps in her efforts to milk a cow ; she let the poidtry into the garden ; she generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge ; she broke crockery ; she dropt our biggest pitcher into the well ; and — ex- cept with her needle, and those little wooden instru- ments for purse - making — was as unserviceable a member of society as any young lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet everybody was kind to Priscilla ; everybody loved her and laughed at her to her face, and did not laugh be- hind her back ; everybody would have given her half of liis last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness in the girl, and con- sidered her not quite able to look after her own inter- ests, or fight her battle with the world. And Hollings- worth — perhaps because he had been the means of introducing Priscilla to her new abode — appeared to recognize her as his ovni especial charge. Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability than sorrow ; it must HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 405 show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily. Priscilla's gayety, moreover, was o£ a nature that showed me how delicate an instrument she was, and what fragile harp-strings were her nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch, it would require but a stronger one to burst them all asimder. Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason with her, and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund of happiness, it would last the loDger. I remember doing so, one summer evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, like Goldsmith's old folks imder the village thorn -tree, while the young people were at their sports. " What is the use or sense of being so very gay ? " I said to Priscilla, while she was taking breath, after a great frolic. " I love to see a sufficient cause for everj^- thing, and I can see none for tliis. Pray tell me, now, what kind of a world you imagine this to be, wliich you are so merry in." " I never think about it at all," answered Priscilla, laughing. " But this I am sure of, that it is a world where eveiybody is kind to me, and where I love every- body. My heart keeps dancing within me, and all the foolish things which you see me do are only the motions of my heart. How can I be dismal, if my heart will not let me?" " Have you nothing dismal to remember ? " I sug- gested. " If not, then, indeed, you are very fortu- nate ! " " Ah ! " said Priscilla, slowly. And then came that unintelligible gesture, when she seemed to be listening to a distant voice. " For my part," I continued, beneficently seeking to overshadow her with my own sombre humor, " my past 406 TJIE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. life has been a tiresome one enough ; yet I would rather look backward ten times than forward once. For, little as we laiow of our life to come, we may be very sure, for one thing, that the good we aim at will not be at- tained. People never do get just the good they seek. If it come at all, it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly want. Then, again, we may rest certain that our friends of to-day will not be our friends of a few years hence ; but, if we keep one of them, it will be at the expense of the others ; and, most probably, we shall kee}} none. To be sure, there are more to be had ; but who cares about making a new set of friends, even shoidd they be bet- ter than those around us ? " " Not I ! " said Priscilla. " I will live and die with these ! " " Well ; but let the future go," resumed I. " As for the present moment, if we could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued, what should you ex- pect to see ? One's own likeness, in the innermost, ho- liest niche ? Ah ! I don't know ! It may not be there at aU. It may be a dusty image, thrust aside into a corner, and by and by to be flvmg out of doors, where any foot may trample upon it. If not to-day, then to- morrow ! And so, Priscilla, I do not see much wisdom in being so very merry in this kind of a world." It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly life to hive up the bitter honey which I here offered to Pris- cilla. And she rejected it ! " I don't believe one word of what you say ! " she re- plied, laughing anew. " You made me sad, for a min- ute, by talking about the past ; but the past never comes back again. Do we dream the same dream twice ? There is nothing: else that I am afraid of." HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 407 So away she ran, and fell down on the green grass, as it was often her luck to do, but got up again, with- out any harm. " Priscilla, Priscilla ! " cried Rollings worth, who was sitting on the doorstep ; " you had better not run any more to-night. You will weary yourself too much. And do not sit down out of doors, for there is a heavy dew beginning to fall." At his first word, she went and sat down under the porch, at Hollingsworth's feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massive- ness that so attracted and soothed this shadow -like girl ? It appeared to me, who have always been cu- rious in such matters, that Priscilla's vague and seem- ingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begua to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven ; and, if you ask what brought them thither, they neither can tell nor care to learn, but cherish an ecstatic faith that there they shall abide forever. Zenobia was in the doorway, not far from Hollings- worth. She gazed at Priscilla in a very singular way. Indeed, it was a sight worth gazing at, and a beauti- ful sight, too, as the fair girl sat at the feet of that dark, powerful figure. Her air, while perfectly mod- est, delicate, and virgin-like, denoted her as swayed by Hollingsworth, attracted to him, and imconsciously seeking to rest upon his strength. I coidd not turn away my own eyes, but hoped that nobody, save Zeno- bia and myseK, were witnessing this picture. It is before me now, with the evening twilight a Kttle deep- ened by the dusk of memory. " Come hither, Priscilla," said Zenobia. " I have something to say to you." 408 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. She siiokc in little more than a whisper. But it is strange how expressive of moods a whisper may often be. Priscilla felt at once that something had gone wrong. "Are you angTy with me ? " she asked, rising slowly, and standing before Zenobia in a drooping attitude. " What have I done? I hope you are not angr}'^ ! " " No, no, Priscilla ! " said Hollingsworth, smiling. " I will answer for it, she is not. You are the one little person in the world with whom nobody can be angry ! " " Angry with you, child ? What a silly idea ! " ex- claimed Zenobia, laughing. " No, indeed ! But, my dear Priscilla, you are getting to be so very pretty that you absolutely need a duenna ; and, as I am older than you, and have had my own little experience of life, and think myself exceedingly sage, I intend to fill the place of a maiden aunt. Every day, I shall give you a lecture, a quarter of an hour in length, on the morals, manners, and proprieties of social life. When our pastoral shall be quite played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom may stand you in good stead." " I am afraid you are angry with me ! " repeated Priscilla, sadly ; for, while she seemed as impressible as wax, the girl often showed a persistency in her own ideas as stubborn as it was gentle. " Dear me, what can I say to the cliild ! " cried Zenobia, in a tone of humorovis vexation. " Well, well ; since you insist on my being angry, come to my room, this moment, and let me beat you ! " Zenobia bade Hollingsworth good-night very sweet- ly, and nodded to me with a smile. But, just as she turned aside with Priscilla, into the dimness of the porch, 1 caught another glance at her countenance. HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, P RISC ILL A. 409 It woidd have made the fortune of a tragic actress, could she have borrowed it for the moment when she fumbles in her bosom for the concealed dagger, or the exceedingly sharp bodkin, or mingles the ratsbane in her lover's bowl of wine or her rival's cup of tea. Not that I in the least anticipated any such catastrophe, — it being a remarkable truth that custom has in no one point a greater sway than over our modes of wreaking our wild passions. And besides, had we been in Italy, instead of New England, it was hardly yet a crisis for the dagger or the bowl. It often amazed me, however, that Hollingsworth should show himself so recklessly tender towards Pris- cilla, and never once seem to think of the effect which it might have upon her heart. But the man, as I have endeavored to explain, was thrown comjjletely off his moral balance, and quite bewildered as to his personal relations, by his great excrescence of a phil- anthropic scheme. I used to see, or fancy, indica- tions that he was not altogether obtuse to Zenobia's influence as a woman. No doubt, however, he had a still more exquisite enjoyment of Priscilla's silent sjinpathy with his purposes, so unalloyed with crit- icism, and therefore more grateful than any intellec- tual approbation, which always involves a possible re- serve of latent censure. A man — poet, prophet, or whatever he may be — readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily ten- dered. In requital of so rich benefits as he was to confer upon mankind, it would have been hard to deny Hollingsworth the simple solace of a young girl's heart, which he held in his hand, and smelled to, like a rosebud. But what if, wliile pressing out its fragrance, he should crush the tender rosebud in his grasp ! 410 TIJK BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. As for Zcnobia, I saw no occasion to give myself any trouble. With her native strength, and her ex- perience of the world, she could not be supposed to need any help of mine. Nevertheless, I was really generous enough to feel some little interest likewise for Zenobia. With all her faults (which might have been a gi-eat many besides the abundance that I knew of), she possessed noble traits, and a heart wliich must, at least, have been valuable while new. And she seemed ready to fling it away as uncalcidatingly as Priscilla herself. I could not but suspect that, if merely at play with Hollingsworth, she was sporting with a power which she did not fidly estimate. Or, if in earnest, it might chance, between Zenobia's pas- sionate, force, and his dark self-delusive egotism, to turn out such earnest as would develoj) itself in some sufficiently tragic catastrophe, though the dagger and the bowl should go for nothing in it. Meantime, the gossip of the Community set them do^vn as a pair of lovers. They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in the wood-paths : Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and sternly pathetic ; Zenobia, with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes softened from their ordinary brightness, looked so beautiful, that had her compan- ion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed impos- sible but that one glance should melt him back into a man. Oftener than anywhere else, they went to a certain point on the slope of a pasture, commanding nearly the whole of our own domain, besides a view of the river, and an airy prospect of many distant hills. The bond of our Commimity was such, that the members had the privilege of building cottages for their own residence within our precincts, thus lay- HOLLINGSWORTH, ZENOBIA, PRISCILLA. 411 ing a heartli-stone and fencing in a home private and peculiar to all desirable extent, while yet the inhabi- tants should continue to share the advantages of an as- sociated life. It was inferred that Hollingsworth and Zenobia intended to rear their dwelling on this favor- ite spot. I mentioned those rumors to Hollingsworth, in a playf id way. " Had you consulted me," I went on to observe, " I should have recommended a site farther to the left, just a little withdrawn into the wood, with two or three peeps at the prospect, among the trees. You will be in the shady vale of years, long before you can raise any better kind of shade around your cottage, if you build it on this bare slope." " But I offer my edifice as a spectacle to the world," said Hollingsworth, " that it may take example and build many another like it. Therefore, I mean to set it on the open hill-side." Twist these words how I might, they offered no very satisfactory import. It seemed hardly probable that Hollingsworth should care about educating the public taste in the department of cottage architecture, desir- able as such improvement certainly was. A VISITOR FROM TOWN. IIOLLINGSWORTH and I — we had beeen hoemg po- tatoes, that forenoon, whOe the rest of the fraternity were engaged in a distant quarter of the farm — sat under a ckmip of maples, eating our eleven-o'clock lunch, when we saw a stranger approaching along the edge of the field. He had admitted himself from the roadside through a turnstile, and seemed to have a purpose of speaking with us. And, by the by, we were favored with many \dsits at Blithedale, especially from people who sympathized with our theories, and perhaps held themselves ready to unite in our actual experiment as soon as there shoidd appear a reliable promise of its success. It was rather ludicrous, indeed (to me, at least, whose en- thusiasm had insensibly been cxlialed, together with the j)erspiration of many a hard day's toil), it was ab- solutely funny, therefore, to observe what a glory was shed about our life and labors, in the imagination of these longing proselytes. In their view, we were as poetical as Arcadians, besides being as practical as the hardest-fisted husbandmen in Massachusetts. We did not, it is true, spend much time in piping to our sheep, or warbling our innocent loves to the sisterhood. But they gave us credit for imbuing the ordinary rustic occupations with a kind of religious poetry, insomuch that om' very cow-yards and pigsties were as delight- A VISITOR FROM TOWN. 413 fully fragrant as a flower-garden. Nothing used to please me more than to see one of these lay enthusiasts snatch up a hoe, as they were very prone to do, and set to work with a vigor that perhaps carried him through about a dozen ill-directed strokes. Men are wonderfully soon satisfied, in this day of shamefid bod- ily enervation, when, from one end of life to the other, such multitudes never taste the sweet weariness that follows accustomed toil. I seldom saw the new en- thusiasm that did not grow as flmisy and flaccid as the proselyte's moistened shirt-collar, with a quarter of an hour's active labor under a July sun. But the person now at hand had not all the air of one of these amiable visionaries. He was an elderly man, dressed rather shabbily, yet decently enough, in a gray frock-coat, faded towards a brown hue, and wore a broad-brimmed white hat, of the fashion of several years gone by. His hair was perfect silver, without a dark thread in the whole of it ; his nose, though it had a scarlet tip, by no means indicated the jollity of which a red nose is the generally admitted symbol. He was a subdued, imdemonstrative old man, who would doubt- less drink a glass of liquor, now and then, and prob- ably more than was good for him, — not, however, with a purpose of undue exhilaration, but in the hope of bringing his spirits up to the ordinary level of the world's cheerfulness. Drawing nearer, there was a shy look about him, as if he were ashamed of his pov- erty, or, at any rate, for some reason or other, would rather have us glance at him sidelong than take a full front view. He had a queer appearance of hiding himself behind the patch onJiis_left_eye. " I know this old gentleman,'" said I to Hollings- worth, as we sat observing him ; " that is, I have met 414 THE BLirilEDALE ROMANCE. him a hundred times in town, and have often amused my fancy with wondering what ho was before he came to be what he is. He haimts restaurants and such places, and has an odd way of lurking in corners or getting behind a door whenever practicable, and hold- ing out his hand with some little article in it which he wishes you to buy. The eye of the world seems to tiouble him, although he necessarily lives so much in it. I never expected to see him in an open field." " Have you learned anything of his history ? " asked Ilollingsworth. " Not a circumstance," I answered ; " but there must be something curious in it. I take him to be a harmless sort of a jjerson, and a tolerably honest one ; but his manners, being so furtive, remind me of those of a rat, — a rat without the mischief, the fierce eye, the teeth to bite with, or the desire to bite. See, now ! He means to skulk along that fringe of bushes, and approach us on the other side of our clump of ma- ples." We soon heard the old man's velvet tread on the grass, indicating that he had arrived within a few feet of where we sat. " Good morning, Mr. Moodie," said Hollingsworth, addressing the stranger as an acquaintance ; " you must have had a hot and tiresome walk from the city. Sit down, and take a morsel of our bread and cheese." The visitor made a grateful little murmur of acquies- cence, and sat down in a spot somewhat removed ; so that, glancing round, I coidd see his gray pantaloons and dusty shoes, while his upper part was mostly hid- den behind the shrubbery. Nor did he come forth from this retirement durinij the whole of the interview that followed. We handed him such food as we had, A VISITOR FROM TOWN. 415 together with a brown jug of molasses and water, (would that it had been brandy, or something better, for the sake of his chill old heart!) like priests offer- ing dainty sacrifice to an enshrined and invisible idol. I have no idea that he really lacked sustenance ; but it was quite touching, nevertheless, to hear hun nibbling away at our crusts. " Mr. Moodie," said I, " do you remember selling me one of those very pretty little silk purses, of which you seem to have a monojioly in the market ? I keep it to this day, I can assure you." " Ah, thank you," said our guest. " Yes, Mr. Cov- erdale, I used to sell a good many of those little purses." He spoke languidly, and only those few words, like a watch with an inelastic spring, that just ticks a mo- ment or two, and stops again. He seemed a very for- lorn old man. In the wantonness of youth, strength, and comfortable condition, — making my prey of peo- ple's individualities, as my custom was, — I tried to identify my mind with the old fellow's, and take his view of the world, as if looking through a smoke- blackened glass at the sun. It robbed the landscape of all its life. Those pleasantly swelling slopes of our farm, descending towards the wide meadows, through which sluggisldy circled the brimful tide of the Charles, bathing the long sedges on its hither and farther shores ; the broad, sunny gleam over the winding wa- ter ; that peculiar picturesqueness of the scene where capes and headlands put themselves boldly forth upon the perfect level of the meadow, as into a green lake, with inlets between the promontories; the shadowy woodland, with twinkling showers of light falling into its depths ; the sultry heat - vapor, which rose every- 416 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. where like incense, and in which my soul delighted, as indicating so rich a fervor in the passionate day, and in the earth that was burning with its love, — I beheld all these things as through old Moodie's eyes. When my eyes are dimmer than they have yet come to be, I will go thither again, and see if I did not catch the tone of his mind aright, and if the cold and lifeless tint of his perceptions be not then repeated in my own. Yet it was unaccountable to myself, the interest that I felt in him. " Have you any objection," said I, " to telling me who made those little purses ? " " Gentlemen have often asked me that," said Moo- die, slowly ; " but I shake my head, and say little or nothing, and creep out of the way as well as I can. I am a man of few words ; and if gentlemen were to be told one thing, they would be very apt, I suppose, to ask me another. But it happens, just now, Mr. Cov- erdale, that you can tell me more about the maker of those little purses than I can tell you." " Why do you trouble him with needless questions, Coverdale ? " interrupted Iloliingsworth. " You must have known, long ago, that it was Priscilla. And so, my good friend, you have come to see her ? Well, I am glad of it. You will find her altered very much for the better, since that winter evening when you put her into my charge. W^hy, Priscilla has a bloom in her cheeks, now ! " " Has my pale little girl a bloom ? " repeated Moo- die, with a kind of slow wonder. " Priscilla with a bloom in her cheeks ! Ah, I am afraid I shall not know my little girl. And is she happy ? " " Just as happy as a bird," answered Hollingsworth. A VISITOR FROM TOWN. 417 " Tlien, gentlemen," said our gaiest, apprehensively, " I don't think it well for me to go any farther. I crept hitherward only to ask about Priseilla ; and now that you have told me such good news, perhaj^s I can do no better than to creep back again. If she were to see this old face of mine, the child would remember some very sad times which we have spent together. Some very sad times, indeed ! She has forgotten them, I know, — them and me, — else she could not be so happy, nor have a bloom in her cheeks. Yes — yes — yes," continued he, still with the same torpid utterance ; " with many thanks to you, Mr. Hollings- worth, I will creep back to town again." "You shall do no such thing, Mr. Moodie," said Hollingsworth, bluffly. " Priseilla often speaks of you ; and if there lacks anything to make her cheeks bloom like two damask roses, I '11 venture to say it is just the sight of your face. Come, — we will go and find her." " Mr. Hollingsworth ! " said the old man, in his hesitating way. " Well," answered Hollingsworth. "Has there been any call for Priseilla?" asked Moo- die ; and though his face was hidden from us, his tone gave a sure indication of the mysterious nod and wink with which he put the question. " You know, I think, sir, what I mean." " I have not the remotest suspicion what you mean, Mr. Moodie," replied Hollingsworth ; " nobody, to my knowledge, has called for Priseilla, except yourself. But come ; we are losing time, and I have several things to say to you by the way." " And, Mr. Hollingsworth ! " repeated Moodie. " Well, again ! " cried my friend, rather impatiently. "What now?" VOL. V. 27 418 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. " There is a lady here," said the old man ; and his voice lost some of its wearisome hesitation. "You will account it a very strange matter for me to talk about : but I chanced to know this lady when she was but a little child. If I am rightly informed, she has grown to be a very fine woman, and makes a brilliant figure in the world, with her beauty, and her talents, and her noble way of spending her riches. I should recognize this lady, so people tell me, by a magnifi- cent flower in her hair." " What a rich tinge it gives to his colorless ideas, when he speaks of Zenobia ! " I whispered to IIol- lingsworth. " But how can there possibly be any in- terest or connecting link between him and her? " " The old man, for years past," whispered Hollings- worth, " has been a little out of his right mind, as you probably see." " What I would inquire," resmned Moodie, " is, whether this beautiful lady is kind to my poor Pris- cilla." " Very kind," said HoUingsworth. " Does she love her ? " asked Moodie. " It slioidd seem so," answered my friend. " They are always together." " Like a gentlewoman and her maid - servant, I fancy ? " suggested the old man. There was something so singidar in his way of say- ing this, that I coidd not resist the impiUse to turn quite round, so as to catch a ghmpse of his face, al- most imagining that I slioidd see another person than old Moodie. But there he sat, with the patched side of his face towards me. " Like an elder and younger sister, rather," rejilied Ilollinosworth. A VISITOR FROM TOWN. 419 " Ah ! " said Moodie, more complacently, — for his latter tones had harshness and acidity in them, — " it would gladden my old heai't to witness that. If one thing would make me happier than another, Mr. Hol- lingsworth, it woidd be to see that beautiful lady hold- ing my little girl by the hand." " Come along," said Hollingsworth, " and perhaps you may." After a little more delay on the part of our freakish visitor, they set forth together, old Moodie keeping a step or two behind Hollingsworth, so that the latter could not very conveniently look hun in the face. I re- mained under the tuft of maples, doing my utmost to draw an inference from the scene that had just passed. In sj)ite of Hollingsworth' s off-hand explanation, it did not strike me that our strange guest was really beside himself, but only that his mind needed screw- ing up, like an instrument long out of tune, the strings of which have ceased to vibrate smartly and sharply. Methovight it would be profitable for us, jjrojectors of a happy life, to welcome this old gray shadow, and cherish hmi as one of us, and let liim creep about our domain, in order that he might be a little merrier for our sakes, and we, sometimes, a little sadder for his. Human destinies look ominous without some percepti- ble intermixture of the sable or the gray. And then, too, should any of our fraternity grow feverish with an over - exulting sense of prosperity, it would be a sort of cooling regimen to slink off into the woods, and spend an hour, or a day, or as many days as might be requisite to the cure, in uninterrupted communion with this deplorable old Moodie ! Going homeward to dinner, I had a glimiDse of him, behind the trunk of a tree, gazing earnestly towards a 420 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. particular window of the farm-house ; and, by and hy, Priscilla appeared at this window, playfully drawing along Zenobia, who looked as bright as the very day that was blazing down upon us, only not, by many degrees, so well advanced towards her noon. I was con\dnced that this pretty sight must have been pur- posely arranged by Priscilla for the old man to see. But either the girl held her too long, or her fondness was resented as too great a freedom ; for Zenobia suddenly put Priscilla decidedly away, and gave her a haughty look, as from a mistress to a dependant. Old Moodie shook his head ; and again and again I saw him shake it, as he "withdrew along the road ; and, at the last point whence the farm-house was visible, he turned and shook his uplifted staff. XI. THE WOOD-PATH. Not long after the preceding incident, in order to get the ache of too constant labor out of my bones, and to relieve my spirit of the irksomeness of a settled routine, I took a holiday. It was my purpose to spend it, all alone, from breakfast-time till twilight, in the deepest wood-seclusion that lay anywhere around us. Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self- commimion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little worth, and my sensibili- ties grew as arid as a tuft of moss (a thing whose life is in the shade, the rain, or the noontide dew), crum- bling in the sunshine after long expectance of a shower. So, with my heart full of a drowsy pleasure, and cau- tious not to dissipate my mood by previous intercourse with any one, I hurried away, and was soon pacing a wood-path, arched overhead with boughs, and dusky- brown beneath my feet. At first, I walked very swiftly, as if the heavy flood- tide of social life were roaring at my heels, and woidd outstrip and overwhelm me, ^^^thout all the better dili- gence in my escape. But, threading the more distant windings of the track, I abated my pace, and looked 422 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. about me for some side-aisle, that slioidcl admit me into the iuuermost sanctuary of this green cathedral, just as, in human acquaintanceship, a casual opening sometmies lets us, all of a sudden, into the long-sought intimacy of a mysterious heart. So much was I ab- sorbed in my reflections, — or, rather, in my mood, the substance of which was as yet too shapeless to be called thought, — that footsteps rustled on the leaves, and a figure passed me by, almost without impressing either the sound or sight upon my consciousness. A moment afterwards, I heard a voice at a little distance beliind me, speaking so sharply and imijerti- nently that it made a complete discord with my spir- itual state, an/l caused the latter to vanish as abruptly as when you thrust a finger into a soap-bubble. " Halloo, friend ! " cried this most unseasonable voice. " Stop a moment, I say ! I must have a word with you ! " I turned about, in a humor ludicrously irate. In the first place, the interruption, at any rate, was a grievous injm-y ; then, the tone displeased me. And, finally, unless there be* real affection in his heart, a man cannot, — such is the bad state to wliich the world has brought itself, — cannot more effectually show his contempt for a brother-mortal, nor more gallingly as- sume a position of superiority, than by addressing him as " friend." Especially does the misapplication of this phrase bring out that latent hostility which is sure to animate peculiar sects, and those wlio, with how- ever generous a purpose, have sequestered themselves from the crowd ; a feeling, it is true, which may be hidden in some dog-kennel of the heart, grumbling there in the darkness, but is never quite extinct, until the dissenting party have gained power and scope THE WOOD-PATH. 423 enough to treat the workl generously. For my part, 1 shoukl have taken it as far less an insult to be styled " fellow," " clown," or " biunpkin." To either of these appellations my rustic garb (it was a linen blouse, with checked shirt and striped pantaloons, a chip hat on my head, and a rough hickory-stick in my hand) very fairly entitled me. As the case stood, my temper darted at once to the opposite pole ; not friend, but enemy ! " What do you want with me ? " said I, facing about. " Come a little nearer, friend," said the stranger, beckoning. " No," answered I. " If I can do anything for you without too much trouble to myself, say so. But rec- ollect, if you please, that you are not speaking to an acquaintance, much less a friend ! " " Upon my word, I believe not ! " retorted he, look, ing at me with some curiosity ; and, lifting his hat, he made me a salute which had enough of sarcasm to be offensive, and just enough of doubtful courtesy to render any resentment of it absurd. " But I ask your pardon ! I recognize a little mistake. If I may take the liberty to suppose it, you, sir, are probably one of the aesthetic — or shall I rather say ecstatic ? — laborers, who have planted themselves hereabouts. This is your forest of Arden ; and you are either the banished Duke in person, or one of the cliief nobles in his train. The melancholy Jacques, perhaps ? Be it so. In that case, you can ^srobably do me a favor." I never, in my life, felt less inclined to confer a favor on any man. " I am busy," said I. So unexjjectedly had the stranger made me sensible of his presence, that he had almost the effect of an ap- 424 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. parition ; and ccitainly a less appropriate one (taking into view the dim woodland solitnde about us) than if the salvage man of antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. He was still young, seemingly a little under thirty, of a tall and well-developed figure, and as handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style of his beauty, however, though a masculine style, did not at all commend it- self to my taste. His countenance — I hardly know how to describe the peculiarity — had an indecorum in it, a kind of rudeness, a hard, coarse, forth-putting freedom of expression, which no degree of external polish could have abated one single jot. Not that it was vulgar. But he had no fineness of nature ; there was in his eyes (although they might have artifice enough of another sort) the naked exposure of some- thing that ought not to be left prominent. With these vague allusions to what I have seen in other faces as well as his, I leave the quality to be compre- hended best — because with an intuitive repugnance — by those who possess least of it. His hair, as well as his beard and mustache, was coal-black ; his eyes, too, were black and sjjarkling, and his teeth remarkably brilliant. He was rather carelessly but well and fashionably dressed, in a sum- mer-morning costume. There was a gold chain, ex- quisitely wrought, across his vest. I never saw a smoother or whiter gloss than that upon his shirt- bosom, which had a pin in it, set with a gem that glimmered, in the leafy shadow where he stood, like a living tip of fire. He carried a stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imitation of that of a serpent. I hated him, partly, I do believe, from a comparison of my own homely garb with his well-ordered foppish- ness. THE WOOD-PATH. 425 " Well, sir," said I, a little ashamed of my first irritation, but still with no waste of civility, "be f)leased to speak at once, as I have my own business in hand." " I regret that my mode of addressing you was a little unfortunate," said the stranger, smiling; for he seemed a very acute sort of person, and saw, in some degree, how I stood affected towards him. " I in- tended no offence, and shall certainly comport myself with due ceremony hereafter. I merely wish to make a few inquiries respecting a lady, formerly of my ac- quaintance, who is now resident in your Community, and, I believe, largely concerned in your social enter- prise. You call her, I think, Zenobia." " That is her name in literature," observed I ; " a name, too, which possibly she may permit her private friends to know and address her by, — but not one which they feel at liberty to recognize when used of her personally by a stranger or casual acquaintance." " Indeed ! " answered this disagreeable person ; and he turned aside his face for an instant with a brief laugh, which struck me as a noteworthy expression of his character. " Perhaps I might put forward a claim, on your own grounds, to call the lady by a name so appropriate to her splendid qualities. But I am will- ing to know her by any cognomen that you may sug- gest." Heartily wishing that he would be either a little more offensive, or a good deal less so, or break off our intercourse altogether, I mentioned Zenobia's real name. " True," said he ; " and, in general society, I have never heard her called otherwise. And, after all, our discussion of the point has been gratuitous. My ob- 426 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. ject is only to inquire when, where, and how this lady may most conveniently be seen." " At her present residence, of course," I replied. •' You have but to go thither and ask for her. Tliis very path will lead you within sight of the house ; so I Avish you good morning." " One moment, if you please," said the stranger. " The course you indicate would certainly be the proper one, in an ordinary morning call. But my business is private, personal, and somewhat peculiar. Now, in a community like this, I should judge that any little occurrence is likely to be discussed rather more minutely than woidd quite suit my views. I refer solely to myseK, you understand, and without intimat- in2' that it would be other than a matter of entire in- difference to the lady. In short, I especially desire to see her in private. If her habits are such as I have known them, she is probably often to be met with in the woods, or by the river-side; and I think you could do me the favor to point out some favorite walk, where, about this hour, I might be fortunate enough to gain an interview." I reflected that it would be quite a supererogatory piece of Quixotism in me to undertake the guardian- ship of Zenobia, who, for my pains, woidd only make me the butt of endless ridicide, should the fact ever come to her knowledge. I therefore described a spot which, as often as any other, was Zenobia's resort at this period of the day ; nor was it so remote from the farm-house as to leave her in much peril, whatever might be the stranger's character. " A single word more," said he ; and his black eyes sparkled at me, whether with fun or malice I knew not, but certainly as if the Devil were peei3ing out of THE WOOD-PATH. 427 them. " Among your fraternity, 1 understand, there is a certain holy and benevolent blacksmith ; a man of iron, in more senses than one ; a rough, cross-grained, well-meaning individual, rather boorish in his man- ners, as might be exjDected, and by no means of the highest intellectual cultivation. He is a philanthrop- ical lecturer, with two or three disciples, and a scheme of his own, the preliminary step in which involves a large purchase of land, and the erection of a spacious edifice, at an expense considerably beyond his means ; inasmuch as these are to be reckoned in copper or old iron much more conveniently than in gold or silver. He hammers away upon his one topic as lustily as ever he did upon a horseshoe ! Do you know such a person ? " I shook my head, and was turnmg away. " Our friend," he continued, " is described to me as a brawny, shaggy, grim, and ill-favored personage, not particularly well calcidated, one would say, to insinu- ate himself with the softer sex. Yet, so far has tliis honest fellow succeeded with one lady whom we wot of, that he anticipates, from her abmidant resources, the necessary funds for realizing his plan in brick and mortar ! " Here the stranger seemed to be so much amused with his sketch of HoUings worth's character and purposes, that he burst into a fit of merriment, of the same na- ture as the brief, metallic laugh, already alluded to, but immensely prolonged and enlarged. In the excess of his delight, he opened his mouth wide, and disclosed a gold band around the upper part of his teeth, thereby making it apparent that everyone of his brilliant grind- ers and incisors was a sham. This discovery affected me very oddly. I felt as if the whole man were a 428 THE BLITIIKDALE ROMANCE. moral and physical humbug" ; his wonderful beauty of fiwe, for iiught I knew, might be removable like a mask ; and, tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him, save the wicked ex- pression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectial char- acter so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon be- gan to laugh as loudly as himself. By and by, he paused all at once ; so suddenly, in- deed, that my own cachinnation lasted a moment longer. " Ah, excuse me I " said he. " Our interview seems to proceed more merrily than it began." " It ends here," answered I. " And I take shame to myself that my folly has lost me the right of resent- ing your ridicule of a friend." " Pray allow me," said the stranger, approaching a step nearer, and laying his gloved hand on my sleeve. " One other favor I must ask of you. You have a young person, here at Blithedale, of whom I haA^e heard, — whom, perhaps, I have known, — and in whom, at all events, I take a peculiar interest. She is one of those delicate, nervous young creatures, not uncommon in New England, and whom I suppose to have become what we find them by the gradual refining away of the physical system among your women. Some philoso- phers clioose to glorify this habit of body by terming it spiritual ; but, in my opinion, it is rather the effect of unwholesome food, bad air, lack of out-door exer- cise, and neglect of bathing, on the part of these dam- sels and their female progenitors, all resulting in a kind of hereditary dyspepsia. Zenobia, even with her uncomfortable surplus of vitality, is far the better THE WOOD-PATH. 429 model of womanhood. But — to revert again to this young person — she goes among you by the name of Priscilla. Could you possibly afford me the means of speaking with her? " " You have made so many inquiries of me," I ob- served, " that I may at least trouble you with one. What is your name ? " He offered me a card, with " Professor Westervelt " engraved on it. At the same time, as if to vindicate his claim to the professorial dignity, so often assumed on very questionable grounds, he put on a pair of spec- tacles, which so altered the character of his face that I hardly knew him again. But I liked the present as- pect no better than the former one. " I must decline any further connection with your af- fairs," said I, drawing back. " I have told you where to find Zenobia. As for Priscilla, she has closer friends than myself, through whom, if they see fit, you can gain access to her." " In that case," retm'ned the Professor, ceremoni- ously raising his hat, " good morning to you." He took his departure, and was soon out of sight among the windings of the wood-path. But after a little reflection, I could not help regretting that I had so peremptorily broken off the interview, while the stranger seemed inclined to continue it. His evident knowledge of matters affecting my three friends might have led to disclosures or inferences that would per- haps have been serviceable. I was particularly struck with the fact that, ever since the appearance of Pris- cilla, it had been the tendency of events to suggest and establish a connection between Zenobia and her. She had come, in the first instance, as if with the sole pur- pose of claiming Zenobia's protection. Old Moodie's 430 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. visit, it appeai-ed, was chiefly to ascei-tain whether this object had been acconiplishecl. And here, to-day, was the questionable Professor, linking one with the other in his inquiries, and seeking- communication with both. Meanwhile, my inclination for a ramble havdng been balked, I lingered in the vicinity of the farm, with per- haps a vague idea that some new event would grow out of Westervelt's proposed interview with Zenobia. My own part in these transactions was singularly surbordi- nate. It resembled that of the Chorus in a classic play, which seems to be set aloof from the possibility of personal concernment, and bestows the whole meas- ure of its hope or fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the fortunes of others, between whom and itself this sym- pathy is the only bond. Destiny, it may be, — the most skilful of stage-managers, — seldom chooses to ar- range its scenes, and carry forward its drama, without securing the presence of at least one calm observer. It is his office to give applause when due, and some- times an ine\4table tear, to detect the final fitness of incident to character, and distil in his long-brooding thought the whole morality of the performance. Not to be out of the way, in case there were need of me in my vocation, and, at the same time, to avoid thrusting myself where neither destiny nor mortals might desire my presence, I remained pretty near the verge of the woodlands. My position was off the track of Zenobia's customary walk, yet not so remote but that a recognized occasion might speedily have brought me thither. XII. coverdale's hermitage. Long since, in this part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out for myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high upward into the air, among the midmost branches of a white-pme tree. A wild grape-vine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and twisted itself up into the tree, and, after wreath- ing the entanglement of its tendrils ahnost around every bough, had caught hold of three or four neigh- boring trees, and married the whole clump with a per- fectly inextricable knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a summer shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly im- pervious mass of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and closed again beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far aloft, around the stem of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for Robinson Crusoe or King Charles ! A hollow cham- ber of rare seclusion had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the vine had lov- ingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me but little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and open loopholes through the verdant walls. Had it ever been my fortmie to spend a honeymoon, I should have thought seriously of invit- ing my bride up thither, where our next neighbors 432 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. would have l)eeu two orioles iii another part of the clump. It was an admirable place to make verses, tuning the rhji;hm to the breezy s3rmphony that so often stirred among the vine-leaves ; or to meditate an essay for "The Dial," in which the many tongues of Nature whispered mysteries, and seemed to ask only a little stronger puff of wind to speak out the solution of its riddle. Being so pervious to air-currents, it was just the nook, too, for the enjoyment of a cigar. This hermitage was my one exclusive possession while I counted myself a brother of the socialists. It sym- bolized my individuality, and aided me in keeping it in\iolate. None ever foimd me out in it, except, once, a squirrel. I brought thither no guest, because, after Hollingsworth failed me, there was no longer the man alive with whom I could think of sharing all. So there I used to sit, owl-like, yet not without liberal and hospitable thoughts. I counted the innumerable clusters of my vine, and fore-reckoned the abundance of my vintage. It gladdened me to anticipate the sur- prise of the Commimity, when, like an allegorical fig- ure of rich October, I should make my appearance, with shoulders bent beneath the burden of ripe grapes, and some of the crushed ones crimsoning my brow as with a blood-stain. Ascending into this natural turret, I peeped in turn out of several of its small windows. The pine-tree, oeing ancient, rose high above the rest of the wood, which was of comparatively recent growth. Even where I sat, about midway between the root and the topmost bough, my position was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a loi'e as in- COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE. 433 finite as that of the planets. Through one loophole I saw the river lapsing calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its brink, a few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the interior cart-road of our farm, I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke of oxen hitched to a drag of stones, that were to be piled into a fence, on which we employed our- selves at the odd intervals of other labor. The harsh tones of his voice, shouting to the sluggish steers, made me sensible, even at such a distance, that he was ill at ease, and that the balked philanthropist had the battle-spirit in his heart. " Haw, Buck ! " quoth he. " Come along there, ye lazy ones ! What are ye about, now ? Gee ! " " Mankind, in Hollingsworth' s opinion," thought I, " is but another yoke of oxen, as stubborn, stupid, and sluggish as our old Brown and Bright. He vituper- ates us aloud, and curses us in his heart, and will be- gin to prick us with the goad-stick, by and by. But are we his oxen ? And what right has he to be the driver? And why, when there is enough else to do, should we waste our strength in dragging home the ponderous load of his philanthropic absurdities ? At my height above the earth, the whole matter looks ri- diculous ! " Turning towards the farm-house, I saw Priscilla (for, though a great way off, the eye of faith assured me that it was she) sitting at Zenobia's window, and making little purses, I suppose ; or, perhaps, mending the Community's old linen. A bird flew past my tree ; and, as it clove its way onward into the sunny atmos- phere, I flung it a message for Priscilla. "Tell her," said I, "that her fragile thread of life has inextricably knotted itself with other and tougher VOL. V. 28 434 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. threads, and most likely it will be broken. Tell her that Zenobia will not be long her friend. Say that Hollingsworth's heart is on fire with his own purpose, but icy for all human affection ; and that, if she has given him her love, it is like casting a flower into a sepulchre. And say that if any mortal really cares for her, it is myself ; and not even I, for her realities, — poor little seamstress, as Zenobia rightly called her ! — but for the fancy-work with which I have idly decked her out ! " The pleasant scent of the wood, evolved by the hot sun, stole up to my nostrils, as if I had been an idol in its niche. Many trees mingled their fragrance into a thousand-fold odor. Possibly there was a sensual influence in the broad light of noon that lay beneath me. It may have been the cause, in part, that I sud- denly fovmd myself possessed by a mood of disbelief in moral beauty or heroism, and a conviction of the folly of attempting to benefit the world. Our especial scheme of reform, which, from my observatory, I could take in with the bodily eye, looked so ridiculous that it was impossible not to laugh aloud. "But the joke is a little too heav'j'," thought I. "If I were wise, I should get out of the scrape with all dil- igence, and then laugh at my companions for remain- ing in it." ~0 While thus musing, I heard, with perfect distinct- ness, somewhere in the wood beneath, the peculiar laugh which I have described as one of the disa- greeable characteristics of Professor Westervelt. It brought my thoughts back to our recent interview. I recognized as chiefly due to this man's influence the sceptical and sneering view which, just now had filled my mental \dsion, in regard to all life's better pur- COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE. 435 poses. ^Ajnd_ jtjwas thi-ough his eyes, more than my jown, that I was looking- at Hollingsworth, with his glorious, if impracticable dream, and at the noble earthliness of Zenobia's character, and even at Pris- cilla, whose impalpable grace lay so singularly be- tween disease and beauty. The essential charm of each had vanished. There are some spheres the con- tact with which inevitably degrades the high, debases the pure, deforms the beautiful. It must be a mind of vincommon strength, and little impressibility, that can permit itself the habit of such intercourse, and not be permanently deteriorated ; and yet the Profess- or's tone rej^resented that of worldly society at large, where a cold scepticism smothers what it can of our spiritual aspirations, and makes the rest ridiculous. I detested this kind of man ; and all the more because a part of my own nature showed itself responsive to him. Voices were now approaching tlu-ough the region of the wood which lay in the vicinity of my tree. Soon I caught glimpses of two figures — a woman and a man — Zenobia and the stranger — earnestly talking together as they advanced. Zenobia had a rich, though varying color. It was, most of the while, a flame, and anon a sudden pale- ness. Her eyes glowed, so that their light sometimes flashed upward to me, as when the sun throws a daz- zle from some bright object on the ground. Her ges- tures were free, and strikingly impressive. The whole woman was alive with a passionate intensity, which I now perceived to be the phase in which her beauty cul- minated. Any passion would have become her well ; and passionate love, perhaps, the best of all. This was not love, but anger, largely intermixed with scorn. 436 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. Yet the idea strangely forced itself upon me, that there was a sort of familiarity between these two companions, necessarily the result of an intimate love, — on Zenobia's part, at least, — in days gone by, but which had prolonged itself into as intimate a hatred, for all futurity. As they passed among the trees, reckless as her movement was, she took good heed that even the hem of her garment shoidd not brush against the stranger's person. I wondered whether there had always been a chasm, guarded so religiously, betwixt these two. As for Westervelt, he was not a whit more warmed by Zenobia's passion than a salamander by the heat of its native furnace. He would liave been absolutely statuesque, save for a look of slight perplexity, tinc- tured strongly with derision. It was a crisis in which his intellectual ]iereeptions could not altogether help him out. He failed to comprehend, and cared but lit- tle for comprehending, why Zenobia should put herself into such a fume ; but satisfied his mind that it was all folly, and only another shape of a woman's mani- fold absurdity, which men can never understand. How many a woman's evil fate has yoked her with a man like this ! Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete on the emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities except what pertain to us as animals. No passion, save of the senses ; no holy tenderness, nor the delicacy that results from this. Externally they bear a close resemblance to other men, and have perhaps all save the finest grace ; but when a woman wrecks herself on such a being, she ultimately finds that the real womanhood within her has no corre- sponding part in him. Her deepest voice lacks a re- sponse ; the deeper her cry, the more dead his silence. COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE. 437 The fault may be none of his ; he cannot give her what never lived within his soul. But the wretched- ness on her side, and the moral deterioration attendant on a false and shallow life, without strength enough to keep itself sweet, are among the most pitiable wrongs that mortals suffer. Now, as I looked dowTi from my upper region at this man and woman, — outwardly so fair a sight, and wandering like two lovers in the wood, — I imagined that Zenobia, at an earlier period of youth, might have fallen into the misfortmie above indicated. And when her passionate womanhood, as was inevitable, had dis- covered its mistake, here had ensued the character of eccentricity and defiance which distinguished the more public portion of her life. Seeing how aptly matters had chanced thus far, I began to think it the design of fate to let me into all Zenobia's secrets, and that therefore the couple would sit down beneath my tree, and carry on a conversation which would leave me nothing to inquii*e. No doubt, however, had it so haj)pened, I should have deemed myself honorably bound to warn them of a listener's presence, by flinging down a handful of unripe grapes, or by sending an luiearthly groan out of my hiding- place, as if tills were one of the trees of Dante's ghostly forest. But real life never arranges itself ex- actly like a romance. In the first place, they did not sit down at all. Secondly, even while they passed beneath the tree, Zenobia's utterance was so hasty and broken, and Westervelt's so cool and low, that I hardly could make out an intelligible sentence on U[\^ either side. What I seem to remember^ I yet suspect, may have be^patclie3~Together^ by my fancy, ^n brooding ovgr-^the-matter afterwardsT 438 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. " Why not fling the girl off," said Westervelt, " and let her go ? " " She clung to me from the first," replied Zenobia. " I neither know nor care what it is in me that so at- taches her. But she loves me, and I will not fail her." " She will plague you, then," said he, " in more ways than one." " The poor child ! " exclaimed Zenobia. " She can do me neither good nor harm. How should she ? " I know not what reply Westei-velt whispered ; nor did Zenobia's subsequent exclamation give me any clew, except that it evidently inspired her with horror and disgust. " With what kind of a being am I linked ? " cried she. " If my Creator cares aught for my soul, let him release me from this miserable bond I " " I did not think it weighed so heavily," said her companion. " Nevertheless," answered Zenobia, " it wiU strangle me, at last ! " And then I heard her utter a helpless sort of moan ; a sound which, struggling out of the heart of a person of her pride and strength, affected me more than if she had made the wood dolorously vocal with a thou- sand shrieks and wails. Other mysterious words, besides what are above written, they spoke together ; but I understood no more, and even question whether I fairly understood so much as this. By long broodmg over our recollec- tions, we subtilize them into something akin to imagi- nary stuff, and hardly capable of being distmgaiished from it. In a few moments, they were comj^letely beyond ear -shot. A breeze stirred after them, and awoke the leafy tongues of the surrounding trees, which COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE. 439 forthwith began to babble, as if innumerable gossips had all at once got wind of Zenobia's secret. But, as the breeze grew stronger, its voice among the branches was as if it said, " Hush ! Hush ! " and I resolved that to no mortal would I disclose what I had heard. And, though there might be room for casuistry, such, I con- ceive, is the most equitable rule in all similar conjunc- tures. xin. zenobia's legend. The illustrious Society of Blithedale, though it toiled in downright earnest for the good of mankind, yet not unf requently illummated its laborious life with an afternoon or evening of pastime. Picnics under the trees were considerably in vogxie; and, within doors, fragmentary bits of theatrical performance, such as single acts of tragedy or comedy, or dramatic prov- erbs and charades. Zenobia, besides, was fond of giv- ing us readings from Shakespeare, and often wdth a depth of tragic power, or breadth of comic effect, that made one feel it an intolerable wrong to the world that she did not at once go upon the stage. Tableaux vi- vants were another of our occasional modes of amuse- ment, in which scarlet shawls, old silken robes, ruffs, velvets, furs, and all kinds of miscellaneous trumpery converted our familiar companions into the people of a pictorial world. We had been thus engaged on the evening after the incident narrated in the last chapter. Several splendid works of art — either arranged after engravings from the old masters, or original illustra- tions of scenes in history or romance — had been pre- sented, and we were earnestly entreating Zenobia for more. She stood, with a meditative air, holding a large piece of gauze, or some such ethereal stuff, as if con- sidering what picture should next occupy the frame ; ZENOBFA'S LEGEND. 441 while at her feet lay a heap of many-colored garments, which her quick fancy and magic skill could so easily convert into gorgeous draperies for heroes and prin- cesses. " I am getting weary of this," said she, after a mo- ment's thought. "Our own features, and our own figures and airs, show a little too intrusively through all the characters we assinne. We have so much fa- miliarity with one another's realities, that we cannot remove ourselves, at pleasure, into an imaginary sphere. Let us have no more pictures to-night ; but, to make you what poor amends I can, how would you like to have me trump up a wild, spectral legend, on the spur of the moment ? " Zenobia had the gift of telling a fanciful little story, off-hand, in a, way that made it greatly more effective than it was usually fomid to be when she afterwards elaborated the same production with her pen. Her proposal, therefore, was greeted with acclamation. " Oh, a story, a story, by all means ! " cried the young girls. " No matter how marvellous ; we will believe it, every word. And let it be a ghost-story, if you please." " No, not exactly a ghost-story," answered Zenobia ; " but something so nearly like it that you shall hardly tell the difference. And, Priscilla, stand you before me, where I may look at you, and get my inspiration out of your eyes. They are very deep and dreamy to- night." I know not whether the following version of her story will retain any portion of its pristine character ; but, as Zenobia told it wildly and rapidly, hesitating at no extravagance, and dashing at absurdities which I am too timorous to repeat, — g'iving it the varied 442 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. emphasis of her Inimitable voice, and the pictorial illus- tration of her mobile face, while through it all we caught the freshest aroma of the thoughts, as they came bubbling out of her mind, — thus narrated, and thus heard, the legend seemed quite a remarkable af- fair. I scarcely knew, at the time, whether she in- tended us to laugh or be more seriously impressed. From beginning to end, it was undeniable nonsense, but not necessarily the worse for that. THE SILVERY VEIL. You have heard, my dear friends, of the Veiled Lady, who grew suddenly so very famous, a few months ago. And have you never thought how remarkable it was that this marvellous creatui-e shoidd vanish, all at once, while her renown was on the increase, before the public had grown weary of her, and when the enigma of her character, instead of being solved, presented itself more mystically at every exliibition ? Her last appearance, as you know, was before a crowded au- dience. The next evening, — although the bills had announced her, at the corner of every street, in red letters of a gigantic size, — there was no Veiled Lady to be seen ! Now, listen to my simple little tale, and you shall hear the very latest incident in the known life — (if life it may be called, which seemed to have no more reality than the candle-light image of one's seK which peeps at us outside of a dark window-pane) — the life of this shadowy phenomenon. A party of young gentlemen, you are to imderstand, were enjoying themselves, one afternoon, — as young gentlemen are sometimes fond of doing, — over a bot- tle or two of champagne ; and, among other ladies less ZENOBTA'S LEGEND. 443 mysterious, tlie subject of the Veiled Lady, as was very natural, happened to come up before them for discussion. She rose, as it were, with the sparkling effervescence of their wine, and appeared in a more airy and fantastic light on account of the medium through which they saw her. They repeated to one another, between jest and earnest, all the wild stories that were in vogue ; nor, I presiune, did they hesitate to add any small circumstance that the inventive whim of the moment might suggest, to heighten the marvel- lousness of their theme. " But what an audacious report was that," observed one, " which pretended to assert the identity of this strange creature with a young lady," — and here he mentioned her name, — " the daughter of one of our most distinguished families ! " " Ah, there is more in that story than can well be accounted for," remarked another. " I have it on good authority, that the young lady in question is in- variably out of sight, and not to be traced, even by her own family, at the hours when the Veiled Lady is before the public ; nor can any satisfactory explana- tion be given of her disappearance. And just look at the thing: Her brother is a young fellow of spirit. He cannot but be aware of these rumors in reference to his sister. Why, then, does he not come forward to defend her character, unless he is conscious that an investigation would only make the matter worse? " It is essential to the purposes of my legend to dis- tinguish one of these young gentlemen from his com- panions ; so, for the sake of a soft and pretty name (such as we of the literary sisterhood invariably be- stow upon our heroes), T deem it fit to call him Theo- dore. 444 THE lUJTIIEDALE ROMANCE. "• Pshaw I '' exclainiod Theodore ; " her brother is no such fool ! Nobody, unless his brain be as full of bubbles as this wine, can seriously think of crediting that ridiciUous rimior. Why, if my senses did not play me false (which never was the case yet), I affirm that I saw that very lady, last evening, at the exhibi- tion, while this veiled phenomenon was playing off her juggling tricks ! What can you say to that ? " " Oh, it was a spectral illusion that you saw ! " re- plied his friends, with a general laugh. " The Veiled Lady is quite uj) to such a thing." However, as the above-mentioned fable could not hold its ground against Theodore's downright refuta- tion, they went on to speak of other stories which the wild babble of the town had set afloat. Some upheld that the veil covered the most beautiful countenance in the world ; others, — and certainly with more rea- son, considering the sex of the Veiled Lady, — that the face was the most hideous and horrible, and that this was her sole motive for hiding it. It was the face of a corpse ; it was the head of a skeleton ; it was a monstrous \dsage, ^vith snaky locks, like Medusa's, and one great red eye in the centre of the forehead. Again, it was affirmed that there was no single and unchangeable set of features beneath the veil ; but that whosoever should be bold enough to lift it would behold the features of that person, in all the world, who was destined to be his fate ; perhaps he woidd be gi'ceted by the tender smile of the woman whom he loved, or, quite as probably, the deadly scowl of his bitterest enemy would throw a blight over his life. They quoted, moreover, this startling explanation of the whole affair : that the magician who exhibited the Veiled Lady — and who, by the by, was the hand- ZENOBIA'S LEGEND. 445 somest man in the whole world — had bartered his own soul for seven years' possession of a familiar fiend, and that the last year of the contract was wear- ing towards its close. If it were worth ovir while, I coidd keep you till an hour beyond midnight listening to a thousand such ab- surdities as these. But finally our friend Theodore, who prided liimself upon his common-sense, found the matter getting quite beyond his patience. " I offer any wager you like," cried he, setting down his glass so forcibly as to break the stem of it, " that this very evening I find out the mystery of the Veiled Lady!" Young men, I am told, boggle at nothing over their wine ; so, after a little more talk, a wager of consider- able a.momit was actually laid, the money staked, and Theodore left to choose his own method of settling the dispute. How he managed it I know not, nor is it of any great importance to this veracious legend. The most natural way, to be sure, was by bribing the door- keeper, — or possibly he preferred clambering in at the window. But, at any rate, that very evening, while the exhibition was going forward in the hall, Theodore contrived to gain admittance into the pri- vate withdrawing-room whither the Veiled Lady was accustomed to retire at the close of her performances. There he waited, listening, I suppose, to the stifled hum of the great audience ; and no doubt he could distinguish the deep tones of the magician, causing the wonders that he ^\T.'ought to appear more dark and intricate, by his mystic pretence of an explanation. Perhaps, too, in the intervals of the wild breezy music which accompanied the exhibition, he might hear the 446 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. low voice of the Veiled Lady, conveying her sibylline responses. Firm as Theodore's nerves might he, and much as he prided himself on his sturdy perception of realities, I should not be surprised if his heart tlu'obbed at a little more than its ordinary rate. Theodore concealed himself behind a screen. In due time, the performance was brought to a close, and, whether the door was softly opened, or whether her l)odiless presence came through the wall, is more than I can say, but, all at once, without the young man's knowing how it happened, a veiled figure stood in the centre of the room. It was one thing to be in pres- ence of this mystery in the hall of exhibition, where the warm, dense life of hundreds of other mortals kept up the beholder's courage, and distributed her influ- ence among so many ; it was another thing to be quite alone with her, and that, too, with a hostile, or, at least, an unauthorized and unjustifiable pui-pose. I rather imagine that Theodore now began to be sen- sible of something more serious in his enterprise than he had been quite aware of while he sat with his boon- companions over their sj)arkling wine. Very strange, it must be confessed, was the move- ment with which the figure floated to and fro over the carpet, with the silvery veil covermg her from head to foot ; so impalpable, so ethereal, so %vithout substance, as the texture seemed, yet hiding her every outline in an impenetrability like that of midnight. Surely, she did not walk ! She floated, and flitted, and hovered about the room ; no sound of a footstep, no percepti- ble motion of a limb ; it was as if a wandering breeze wafted her before it, at its own wild and gentle pleas- ure. But, by and by, a purpose began to be discern- ible, throughout the seeming vagueness of her unrest. ZENOBIA 'S LEGEND. 447 She was iu quest of something. Could it be that a subtile presentiment had informed her of the young man's presence? And if so, did the Veiled Lady seek or did she shun him ? The doubt in Theodore's mind was speedily resolved ; for, after a moment or two of these erratic flutterings, she advanced more decidedly, and stood motionless before the screen. " Thou art here ! " said a soft, low voice. " Come forth, Theodore ! " Thus summoned by his name, Theodore, as a man of courage, had no choice. He emerged from his con- cealment, and presented himself before the Veiled Lady, with the wine-flush, it may be, quite gone out of his cheeks. " What wouldst thou with me ? " she inquired, with the same gentle composui-e that was in her former utterance. " Mysterious creature," replied Theodore, " I would know who and what you are ! " " My lips are forbidden to betray the secret," said the Veiled Lady. " At whatever risk, I must discover it," rejoined Theodore. " Then," said the Mystery, " there is no way save to lift my veil." And Theodore, partly recovering his audacity, stept forward on the instant, to do as the Veiled Lady had suggested. But she floated backward to the opposite side of the room, as if the yoimg man's breath had possessed power enough to waft her away. " Pause, one little instant," said the soft, low voice, " and learn the conditions of what thou art so bold to undertake I Thou canst go hence, and think of me no more ; or, at thy option, thou canst lift this mysterious 448 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. vei], beneath wliicli I am a sad and lonely prisoner, in a bondage which is worse to me than death. But, be- fore raising it, I entreat thee, in all maiden modesty, to bend forward and impress a kiss where my breath stirs the veil ; and my virgin lips shall come forward to meet thy lips ; and from that instant, Theodore, thou shalt be mine, and I thine, with never more a veil between us. And all the felicity of earth and of the future world shall be thine and mine together. So much may a maiden say behind the veil. If thou shrinkest from this, there is yet another way." " And what is that? " asked Theodore. " Dost thou hesitate," said the Veiled Lady, " to pledge thyself to me, by meeting these lips of mine, while the veil yet hides my face ? Has not thy heart recognized me ? Dost thou come hither, not in holy faith, nor with a pure and generous purpose, but in scornful scepticism and idle curiosity ? Still, thou mayest lift the veil ! But, from that instant, Theo- dore, I am doomed to be thy evil fate ; nor wilt thou ever taste another breath of happiness ! " There was a shade of inexpressible sadness in the utterance of these last words. But Theodore, whose natural tendency was towards scepticism, felt himself ahnost injured and insidted by the Veiled Lady's pro- posal that he should pledge himself, for life and eter- nity, to so questionable a creature as herself ; or even that she should suggest an inconsequential kiss, taking into view the probability that her face was none of the most bewitching. A delightfid idea, tridy, that he should salute the lips of a dead girl, or the jaws of a skeleton, or the grinning cavity of a monster's mouth ! Even shoidd she prove a comely maiden enough in other respects, the odds were ten to one that her teeth ZENOBIA'S LEGEND. 449 were defective ; a terrible drawback on the delectable- ness of a kiss. "Excuse me, fair lad}^" said Theodore, — and I think he nearly burst into a laugh, — " if I prefer to lift the veil first ; and for this affair of the kiss, we may decide upon it afterwards." " Thou hast made thy choice," said the sweet, sad voice behind the veil ; and there seemed a tender but unresentful sense of wrong done to womanhood by the young man's contemptuous interpretation of her offer. " I must not counsel thee to pause, although thy fate is still in thine own hand ! " Grasping at the veil, he flung it upward, and caught a glimpse of a pale, lovely face beneath ; just one mo- mentary glimpse, and then the apparition vanished, and the silvery veil fluttered slowly down and lay upon the floor. Theodore was alone. Our legend leaves him there. His retribution was, to pine forever and ever for another sight of that dim, mournful face, — which might have been his life-long household fireside joy, — to desire, and waste life in a feverish quest, and never meet it more. But what, in good sooth, had become of the Veiled Lady ? Had all her existence been comprehended within that mysterious veil, and was she now annihi- lated ? Or was she a spirit, with a heavenly essence, but which might have been tamed down to human bliss, had Theodore been brave and true enough to claim her ? Hearken, my sweet friends, — and heark- en, dear Priscilla, — and you shall learn the little more that Zenobia can tell you. Just at the moment, so far as can be ascertained, when the Veiled Lady vanished, a maiden, pale and shadowy, rose up amid a luiot of visionary people, who VOL. V. 29 450 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. were seeking for the better life. She was so gentle and so sad, — a nameless melancholy gave her such hold upon their sympathies, — that they never thought of questioning whence she came. She might have heretofoTe existed, or her thin substance might have been moidded out of air at the very instant when they first beheld her. It was all one to them ; they took her to their hearts. Among them was a lady, to whom, more than to all the rest, this pale, mysterious girl attached herself. But one morning the lady was wandering in the woods, and there met her a figure in an Oriental robe, witli a dark beard, and holding in his hand a silvery veil. He motioned her to stay. Being a woman of some nerve, she did not shriek, nor run away, nor faint, as many ladies would have been apt to do, but stood quietly, and bade him speak. The truth was, she had seen his face before, but had never feared it, although she laiew liim to be a terrible magician. " Lady," said he, with a warning gesture, " you are in peril ! " " Peril ! " she exclaimed. " And of what nature ? " " There is a certain maiden," replied the magician, " who has come out of the realm of mystery, and made herself your most intimate comj^anion. Now, the fates have so ordained it, that, whether by her own will or no, this stranger is your deadliest enemy. In love, in worldly fortune, in all your pursuit of happiness, she is doomed to fling a blight over your prospects. There is but one possibility of thwarting her disastrous influ- ence." " Then tell me that one method," said the lady. " Take this veil," he answered, holding forth the sil- very texture. " It is a spell ; it is a powerful enchant- ZENOBIA'S LEGEND. 45] ment, which I wrought for her sake, and beneath which she was once my prisoner. Throw it, at una- wares, over the head of this secret foe, stamp your foot, and cry, ' Arise, Magician ! Here is the Veiled Lady ! ' and immediately I will rise up through the earth, and seize her ; and from that moment you are safe ! " So the lady took the silvery veil, which was like woven air, or like some substance airier than nothing, and that would float upward and be lost among the clouds, were she once to let it go. Returning home- ward, she found the shadowy girl, amid the knot of visionary transcendentalists, who were still seeking for the better life. She was joyous now, and had a rose- bloom in her cheeks, and was one of the prettiest crea- tures, and seemed one of the happiest, that the world could show. But the lady stole noiselessly behind her and threw the veil over her head. As the slight, ethe- real texture sank inevitably down over her figure, the poor girl strove to raise it, and met her dear friend's eyes with one glance of mortal terror, and deep, deep reproach. It coidd not change her purpose. " Arise, Magician ! " she exclaimed, stamping her foot upon the earth. " Here is the Veiled Lady ! " At the word, uprose the bearded man in the Orien- tal robes, — the beautiful, the dai'k magician, who had bartered away his soul ! He threw his arms around the Veiled Lady, and she was his bond-slave for ever- more ! Zenobia, all tliis while, had been holding the piece of gauze, and so managed it as greatly to increase the dramatic effect of the legend at those points where the 452 THE BLTTHEDALE ROMANCE. magic veil was to be described. Arriving at the ca- tastrophe, and littering the fatal words, she flung the gauze over Priscilla's head ; and for an instant her auditors held their breath, half expecting, 1 verily be- lieve, that the magician would start up through the floor, and carry oif our poor little friend, before our eyes. As for Priscilla, she stood droopingiy in the midst of us, making no attempt to remove the veil. " How do you find yourself, my love? " said Zeno- bia, lifting a corner of the gauze, and peeping beneath it, with a mischievous smile. "Ah, the dear little soul ! Why, she is really going to faint ! Mr. Cov- erdale, Mr. Coverdale, pray bring a glass of water ! " Her nerves being none of the strongest, Priscilla hardly recovered her equanimity during the rest of the evening. This, to be sure, was a gTcat pity ; but, nevertheless we thought it a very bright idea of Zeno- bia's to bring her legend to so effective a conclusion. xrv. eliot's pulpit. Our Sundays at Blithedale were not ordinarily kept with such rigid observance as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims, whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had taken up, and were carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which they never dreamed of attaining. On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from oiu* labors. Our oxen, relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the pasture ; each yoke-fel- low, however, keej^ing close beside his mate, and con- tinviing to acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish sympathy, the union which the taskmaster had imposed for his own hard ends. As for us hu- man yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, whose hoes had clinked together throughout the week, we wandered off, in vai'ious directions, to enjoy our inter- val of repose. Some, I believe, went devoutly to the village church. Others, it may be, ascended a city or a country pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much dignity that you would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to have been flung off only since milking-time. Others took long rambles among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing to look at black old farm-houses, with their sloping roofs ; and at the mod- ern cottage, so like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or sorrow coidd have no scope mthin ; and at 454 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. the more pretcndinj^ \'iUa, with its range of wooden columns supporting the needless insolence of a great portico. Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky- barn, and lay there for hours together on the odorous hay ; while the sunstreaks and the shadows strove to- gether, — these to make the barn solemn, those to make it cheerfid, — and both were conquerors ; and the swallows twittered a cheery anthem, flashing into sight, or vanishing as they darted to and fro among the golden rules of sunshine. And others went a lit- tle way into the woods, and threw themselves on moth- er earth, j)illowing their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an old log ; and, dropping asleep, the humble-bees and mosquitoes sung and buzzed about their ears, causing the slmnberers to twitch and start, without awaking. With HoUingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a custom to spend the Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was kno^^^l to us under the name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that the venerable Apostle Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone by, to an Indian auditory. The old pine forest, through which the Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen, an immemorial time ago. But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had apparently never been brought under tillage ; other growths, maple and beech and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees ; so that it was still as wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-gi"eat-grandson of one of Eliot's In- dians (had an}'^ such posterity been in existence) could have desired, for the site and shelter of his wig- wam. These after-growths, indeed, lose the stately so- lemnity of the original forest. If left in due neglect, however, they run into an entanglement of softer wild- ELIOT'S PULPIT. 455 uess, among the rustling leaves of which the sun can scatter cheerfulness as it never could among the dark- browed pines. The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a shattered granite bowlder, or heap of bowlders, with an irregular outline and many fissures, out of which sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees ; as if the scan- ty soil within those crevices were sweeter to their roots than any other earth. At the base of the pulpit, the broken bowlders inclined towards each other, so as to form a shallow cave, within which our little party had sometimes found protection from a summer shower. On the threshold, or just across it, grew a tuft of pale coliunbines, in their season, and violets, sad and shad- owy recluses, such as Priscilla was when we first knew her; children of the sun, who had never seen their father, but dwelt among damp mosses, though not akin to them. At the siunmit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy of a birch-tree which served as a sound- ing-board for the pidpit. Beneath this shade (with my eyes of sense half shut, and those of the imagina- tion widely opened) I used to see the holy Apostle of the Indians, with the sunlight flickering down upon him through the leaves, and glorifying his figure as with the half-perceptible glow of a transfiguration. I the more minutely describe the rock, and this lit- tle Sabbath solitude, because Hollingsworth, at our solicitation, often ascended Eliot's pidpit, and not ex- actly preached, but talked to us, his few disciples, in a strain that rose and fell as naturally as the wind's breath among the leaves of the birch-tree. No other speech of man has ever moved me like some of those discourses. It seemed most pitiful — a positive calam- ity to the world — that a treasury of golden thoughts 456 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. shoukl tlius be scattered, by the liberal handful, down among us three, when a thousand hearers might have been the richer for them ; and Hollingsworth the rich- er, likewise, by the sympathy of multitudes. After speaking much or little, as might happen, he would descend from his gi'ay pulpit, and generally fling him- self at full length on the ground, face do\Miward. Meanwhile, we talked around him on such topics as were suggested by the discourse. Since her interview with Westervelt, Zenobia's con- tinual inequalities of temper had been rather difftcidt for her friends to bear. On the first Sunday after that incident, when Hollingsworth had clambered down from Eliot's pulpit, she declaimed with great earnest- ness and passion, nothing short of anger, on the injus- tice which the world did to women, and equally to it- self, by not allowing them, in freedom and honor, and with the fullest welcome, their natural utterance in public. " It shall not always be so ! " cried she. " If I live another year, I will lift up my own voice in behalf of woman's wider liberty ! " She, perhaps, saw me smile. " What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale ? " exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. " That smile, permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and shallow thought. It is my belief — yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it haj^pens — that, when my sex shall achieve its rights there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles I ELIOT'S PULPIT. 467 us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats ! We mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand bet- ter ones unsaid. You let us write a little, it is true, on a limited range of subjects. But the pen is not for woman. Her power is too natural and immediate. It is with the living voice alone that she can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her heart ! " Now, — though I could not well say so to Zenobia, — I had not smiled from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the clamis which she is begin- ning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me was the fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual af- fections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could meas- ure Zenobia' s inward trouble by the animosity with which she now took uj) the general quarrel of woman against man. " I will give you leave, Zenobia," replied I, " to fling your utmost scorn upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentunent unfavorable to the widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her all she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the party to demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, woidd grant of their own free motion. For instance, I shoidd love dearly — for the next thousand years, at least — to have all government devolve into the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex ; it excites my jealousy, and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of bodily force which abases us, in our compelled submission. But how 458 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. sweet the free, generous courtesy, with which 1 would luieel before a woman-ruler ! " " Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Ze- nobia, laughing. " But how if she were sixty, and a fright?"' " All! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I. " But let me go on. I have never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my heart and con- science as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the very thought ! Oh, in the better order of things. Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women ! The gates of the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in, when that day conies ! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost depth and pu- rity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every mascidine theologist — save only One, who merely veiled himself in mortal and mascidine shape, but was, in truth, divine — has been prone to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their faith in tliat sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his a\\^ul splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to hu- man comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness. Have I not said enough, Zeuobia ? " " I cannot think that this is true," observed Pris- cilla, who had been gazing at me with great, disap- proving eyes. " And I am sure I do not wish it to be true ! " " Poor child ! " exclaimed Zenobia, rather contempt- uously. " She is the ty]oe of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He is never content ELIOT'S PULPIT. 459 unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his own interests than profli- gate disregard of ours I " " Is this true ? " asked Priscilla, with simplicity, turning to Hollingsworth. " Is it all true, that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have been sapng ? " " No, Priscilla I " answered Hollingsworth, with his customary bluntness. " They have neither of them spoken one true word yet." " Do you despise woman ? " said Zenobia. " Ah, HoUmgsworth, that would be most ungratefid ! " " Despise her ? No ! " cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy head and shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely. "She is the most admi- rable handiwork of God, in her true place and charac- ter. Her place is at man's side. Her office, that of the sympathizer; the imreserved, unquestioning believer; the recognition, withheld in every other manner, but given, in pity, through woman's heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in himself ; the echo of God's own voice, pronouncing, ' It is well done ! ' All the sepa- rate action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain, destructive of her o^^^l best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs ! Man is a wretch without woman ; but woman is a monster — and, thank Heaven, an ahnost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster — without man as her acknowl- edged principal ! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand which some of them, — poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only dream of such things because they have missed woman's pe- 460 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. ouliiir happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor woman? — if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated mon- strosities have in view, I would call upon my o^vn sex to use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds ! But it will not be needful. The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it ! " Never was mortal blessed — if blessing it were — with a glance of such entire acquiescence and unques- tioning faith, happy in its completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood over it in perfect content. The very woman whom he pictured — the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more jjowerful existence — sat there at his feet. I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent — as I felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought — this outrageous af- firmation of what struck me as the intensity of mas- culine egotism. It centred ever}i;hing in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had boldly ut- tered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt. Without intending it, he had disclosed the well- spring of all these troubled waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of her sex. But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled. Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger. ELIOT'S PULPIT. 461 " Well, be it so," was all she said. " I, at least, have deep cause to think you right. Let man he but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to become to liim what you say ! " I smiled — somewhat bitterly, it is true — in con- templation of my own ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart ; while HoUingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet ! " Women ahnost invariably behave thus," thought I. " What does the fact mean ? Is it their natiu*e ? Or, is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled deg- radation ? And, in either case, ^vill it be possible ever to redeem them ? " An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this time, at least, there was no more to be said. With one accord, we arose from the ground, and made our way through the tangled imdergrowth towards one of those pleasant wood-paths that woiuid among the over-arching trees. Some of the branches hung so low as partly to conceal the figiu-es that went before from those who followed. Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was ty|3ified in the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in the same direction as herself. Never did she seem so happy as that after- noon. She skipt, and coidd not help it, from very- playfulness of heart. Zenobia and HoUingsworth went next, in close con- tiguity, but not with arm in arm. Now, just when they had passed the impending bough of a birch-tree, 462 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, I i)lainlY saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth in both her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall again ! The gesture was sudden, and full of passion ; the impulse had evidently taken her by surprise ; it ex- pressed all ! Had Zenobia knelt before him, or flung herseK upon his breast, and gasped out, " I love you, I loll in gs worth ! " I could not have been more certain of what it meant. They then walked onward, as be- fore. But, methought, as the declining sun threw Ze- nobia's magnified shadow along the path, I beheld it tremulous ; and the delicate stem of the flower which she wore in her hair was likewise responsive to her agitation. Priscilla — through the medium of her eyes at least — could not possibly have been aware of the ges- ture above described. Yet, at that instant, I saw her droop. The buoyancy, which just before had been so bird-like, was utterly departed ; the life seemed to pass out of her, and even the substance of her fig- ure to grow thin and gray. I almost imagined her a shadow, fading gi-adually into the dimness of the wood. Her pace became so slow that HoUingsworth and Zenobia passed by, and I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her. " Come, Priscilla," said I, looking her intently in the face, which was very pale and sorrowful, " we must make haste after our friends. Do you feel suddenly ill ? A moment ago, you flitted along so lightly that I was comparing you to a bird. Now, on the contra- ry, it is as if you had a heavy heart, and very little strength to bear it with. Pray take my arm ! " " No," said Priscilla, " I do not think it wovdd help me. It is my heart, as you say, that makes me heavy; and I know not why. Just now, I felt very happy." ELIOT'S PULPIT. 463 No doubt it was a kind of sacrilege in me to at- tempt to come within her maidenly mystery ; but, as she appeared to be tossed aside by her other friends, or carelessly let fall, like a flower which they had done with, I could not resist the impulse to take just one peep beneath her folded petals. "Zenobia and yourself are dear friends of late," I remarked. " At first, — that first evening- when you came to us, — she did not receive you quite so warmly as might have been wished." " I remember it," said Priscilla. " No wonder she hesitated to love me, who was then a stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or beauty, — she being herself so beautiful ! " " But she loves you now, of course ? " suggested I. " And at this very instant you feel her to be your dearest friend?" " Why do you ask me that question ? " exclaimed Priscilla, as if frightened at the scrutiny into her feel- ings which I compelled her to make. " It somehow puts strange thoughts into my mind. But I do love Zenobia dearly ! If she only loves me half as well, I shall be happy ! " " How is it j)ossible to doubt that, Priscilla? " I re- joined. " But observe how pleasantly and happily Ze- nobia and Hollingsworth are walking together. I call it a delightful sj)ectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend ! So many people in the world mistrust him, — so many disbelieve and ridicide, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is, — that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as Zeno- bia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, 464 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so magnificent a woman. How very beautiful Zenobia is ! And Hollingsworth knows it, too." There may have been some petty malice in what I said. Generosity is a very fine thing, at a proper time and within due limits. But it is an insufferable bore to see one man engrossing every thought of all the women, and lea\dng his friend to shiver in outei' seclusion, without even the alternative of solacing 1dm- self with what the more fortunate individual has re- jected. Yes, it was out of a foolish bitterness of heart that I had spoken. " Go on before," said Priscilla, abruptly, and with true feminine imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. " It pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as you." With her hand, she made a little gesture of dis- missal. It provoked me ; yet, on the whole, was the most bewitcliing thing that Priscilla had ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward, wonder- ing — as I had wondered a thousand times already — how Hollingsworth meant to dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to my perception, and, as I could not but now suppose, to his) he had engrossed into liis own hugre egotism. There was likewise another subject hardly less fruit- ful of speculation. In what attitude did Zenobia pre- sent herself to Hollingsworth? Was it in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on her affections nor claim- ant to her hand, but fully at liberty to surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she appar- ently expected to receive ? But was it a vision that T had Nvitnessed in the wood ? Was Westervelt a gob- lin ? Were those words of passion and agony, which ELIOT'S PULPIT. 465 Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage dec- flamation ? Were they formed of a material lighter than common air ? Or, supposing them to bear ster- ling weight, was it a jjerilous and dreadfid wrong which she was meditating towards herself and Hol- lingsworth ? Arriving nearly at the farm-house, I looked back over the long slope of pasture-land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the Community, they meant to build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of the wood. VOL. V. 30 XV. A CRISIS. Thus the smnmer was passing away, — a summer of toil, of interest, of something that was not pleasui-e, but which went deep into my heart, and there became a rich experience. I found myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetmie, to be spent on the same sys- tem. The Community were now beginning to form their permanent plans. One of our purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we called it, after Fourier ; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in my remembrance), where the gieat and gen- eral family shoidd have its abiding-place. Indi\'idual members, too, who made it a point of religion to pre- serve the sanctity of an exclusive home, were selecting sites for their cottages, by the woodside, or on the breezy swells, or in the sheltered nook of some little valley, according as their taste might lean towards snugness or the picturesque. Altogether, by project- ing our minds outward, we had imparted a show of novelty to existence, and contemplated it as hopefully as if the soil beneath our feet had not been fathom- deep \vith the dust of deluded generations, on every one of which, as on ourselves, the world had imposed itself as a hitherto unwedded bride. Hollingsworth and myself had often discussed these prospects. It was easy to perceive, however, that he gpoke with little or no fervor, but either as questioning A CRISIS. 467 the fulfilment of our anticipations, or, at any rate, with a quiet consciousness that it was no personal concern of his. Shortly after the scene at Eliot's pulpit, while he and I were repairing an old stone fence, I amused myself wath sallying forward into the futtu-e time. " When we come to be old men," I said, " they will call us imeles, or fathers, — Father Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale, — and we will look back cheerf idly to these early days, and make a romantic story for the young peoiDle (and if a little more romantic than truth may warrant, it will be no harm) out of our severe trials and hardships. In a century or two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical personages, or exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all events. They will have a great public hall, in which your portrait, and mine, and twenty other faces that are living now, shall be hung up ; and as for me, I wiU be painted in my shirt-sleeves, and with the sleeves rolled up, to show my muscidar development. What stories will be rife among them about our mighty strength! " continued I, lifting a big stone and putting it into its place, " though our posterity will really be far stronger than oiu'selves, after several generations of a simple, natural, and ac- tive life. What legends of Zenobia's beauty, and Pris- cilla's slender and shadowy grace, and those mysteri- ous qualities which make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light. In due course of ages, we must all fig- lu-e heroically in an epic poem ; and we will ourselves — at least, I will — bend unseen over the future poet, and lend him inspiration wliile he writes it." "You seem," said Hollingsworth, " to be trying how much nonsense you can jjour out in a breath." " I wish you woidd see fit to comprehend," retorted I, " that the profoundest wisdom must be mingled with 468 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. uiue tenths of nonsense, else it is not worth the breath that ntters it. But I do long for the cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees — which we will set out — to cover them with a breadth of shadow. This spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too, for children to be born among us. .The first-born child is still to come. And I shall never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well as poetical system of human life, un^ til somebody has sanctified it by death." " A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly ! " said Hollingsworth. " As good as any other," I replied. " I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of all these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first to die. Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it, to fix upon a spot for a cemetery ? Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death's garden-ground ; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape our funeral rites, and the cheerfid allegories which we will model into tombstones, the final scene shall lose its terrors ; so that hereafter it may be happiness to live, and bliss to die. None of us must die young. Yet, should Providence ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, but affect us with a tender, delicious, only half -melancholy, and ahnost smiling pathos ! " " That is to say," muttered Hollingsworth, " you will die like a heathen, as you certainly live like one. But, listen to me, Coverdale. Your fantastic anticipa- tions make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, f)n wliich we A CRISIS. 469 have wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass ? " , " Certainly, I do," said I. " Of course, when the reality comes, it will wear the every-day, commonplace, dusty, and rather homely garb, that reality always does put on. But, setting aside the ideal charm, I hold that our highest anticipations have a solid foot- ing on common-sense." "You only half believe what you say," rejoined Hollingsworth ; " and as for me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of this pebble for its realization, were that possible. And what more do you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth aU our strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we." There can be no need of giving in detail the conver- sation that ensued. It is enough to say that Hollings- worth once more brought forward his rigid and uncon- querable idea, — a scheme for the reformation of the wicked by methods moral, intellectual, and industrial, by the sympathy of pure, humble, and yet exalted minds, and by opening to his pupils the jjossibility of a worthier life than that which had become their fate. It appeared, unless he over-estimated his own means, that Hollingsworth held it at his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community, and which had not yet been made irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was just the foundation that he desired. Our begin- nings might readily be adapted to his great end. The 470 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. aiTangements ali-eady completed woidd work quietly into his system. So plausible looked his theory, and, more than that, so practical, — such an air of reason- ableness had he, by patient thought, thro%\Ti over it, — each segment of it was contrived to dovetail into all the rest with such a complicated applicability, and so ready was he with a response for every objection, that, really, so far as logic and argument went, he had the matter all his own way. " But," said I, " whence can you, having no means of your own, derive the enormous capital which is es- sential to this experiment ? State Street, I imagine, would not draw its purse-strings very liberally in aid of such a specidation." " I have the fimds — as much, at least, as is needed for a commencement — at command," he answered. " They can be produced within a month, if necessary." My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could only be her wealth which Hollingsworth was appropriating so lavislily. And on what conditions was it to be had? Did she fling it into the scheme with the uncalculating generosity that characterizes a woman when it is her impulse to be generous at all ? And did she fling her- self along with it ? But Hollingsworth did not volun- teer an explanation. " And have you no regrets," I inquired, " in over- throwing this fair system of our new life, which has been planned so deeply, and is now beginning to flour- ish so hopef idly aroimd us ? How beautif id it is, and, so far as we can yet see, how practicable ! The ages have waited for us, and here we are, the very first that have essayed to carry on our mortal existence in love and mutual help ! Hollingsworth, I would be loath to take the ruin of this enterprise upon my conscience." A CRISIS. 471 " Then lot it rest wholly upon mine ! " he answered, knitting his black brows. " I see through the system. It is full of defects, — irremediable and damning ones ! — from first to last, there is nothing else ! I gTasp it in my hand, and find no substance whatever. There is not human nature in it." " Why are you so secret in your operations ? " I asked. " God forbid that I shoidd accuse you of in- tentional wrong ; but the besetting sin of a philanthro- pist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other hon- orable men. At some point of his course — I know not exactly when or where — he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience. Oh my dear friend, beware this error ! If you meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but allow them an opportunity of defend- ing themselves." " It does not suit me," said Hollingsworth. " Nor is it my duty to do so." " I think it is," replied I. Hollingsworth frowned ; not in passion, but, like fate, inexorably. " I will not argue the point," said he. " What I desire to know of you is, — and you can tell me in one word, — whether I am to look for your cooperation in this great scheme of good ? Take it up with me ! Be my brother in it ! It offers you (what you have told me, over and over again, that you most need) a pui-- pose in life, worthy of the exti*emest self-devotion, — worthy of martyrdom, shoidd God so order it ! In this 472 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. \4o\v, I jjresent it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind. Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought into this enter- prise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the languor and vague wretchedness of an indo- lent or half-occupied man. There may be no more aimless beauty in your life ; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will, — every- thing that a manly and generous nature should desire ! We shall succeed ! AYe shall have done our best for this miserable world ; and happiness (which never comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares." It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me. " Coverdale," he mmnnured, " there is not the man in this wide world whom I can love as I coidd you. Do not forsake me! " As I look back upon this scene, through the cold- ness and dinmess of so many years, there is still a sen- sation as if Hollingsworth had caught hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I with- stood it. But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of phil- anthropy nothing but what was odious. A loathsome- ness that was to be forever in my daily work ! A great black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to col- lect out of a thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of transmut- ing: it into virtue ! Had I but touched his extended hand, Ilollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified myself with A CRISIS. 473 doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too gigantic for liis integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations that should have been paramount to every other. " Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise ? " I asked. " She is," said Hollings worth. " She ! — the beautiful I — the gorgeous ! " I ex- claimed. " And how have you prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element ? " " Throvigh no base methods, as you seem to suspect," he answered ; " but by addressing whatever is best and noblest in her." Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did so, — generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought, — I could not judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, 1 cannot precisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itseK so involunta- rily, that there must needs have been an aptness in it. " What is to become of Priscilla? " Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and with glow- ing eyes. He could not have showai any other kind of expression than that, had he meant to strike me with a sword. " Why do you bring in the names of these women ? " said he, after a moment of pregnant sUence. " What have they to do with tlie proposal which I make you ? I must have your answer ! Will you devote yourself, and sacrifice all to this great end, and be my friend of friends forever ? " " In Heaven's name, Hollingsworth," cried I, get- ting angry, and glad to be angry, because so only was 474 TTIK BLITTJEDALE ROMANCE. it possible to oppose his tremendous concentrativeness and indomitable will, " cannot you conceive that a man may wish well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down? And will you cast off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead of yours ? " " Be with me," said Hollingsworth, " or be against me ! There is no third choice for you." " Take this, then, as my decision," I answered. " I doubt the wisdom of your scheme. Furthennore, I greatly fear that the methods by which you allow your- self to pursue it are such as cannot stand the scrutiny of an unbiased conscience." " And you will not join me ? " "No!" I never said the word — and certainly can never have it to say hereafter — that cost me a thousandth part so hard an effort as did that one syllable. The heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast. I was gazing steadfastly at Hollingsworth. It seemed to me that it stnick him, too, like a bullet. A ghastly paleness — always so terrific on a swarthy face — overspread his features. There was a convidsive movement of liis throat, as if he were forcing down some words that struggled and fought for utterance. Whether words of anger, or words of grief, I cannot tell ; although many and many a time I have vainly tormented myself with conjectur- ing which of the two they were. One other appeal to my friendship, — such as once, already, Hollingsworth had matle, — taking me in the revulsion that followed a strenuous exercise of opposing will, would completely have subdued me. But he left the matter there. A CRISIS. 475 "WeU!" said he. And that was all ! I should have been thankf id for one word more, even had it shot me through the heart, as mine did him. But he did not speak it ; and, after a few moments, with one accord, we set to work again, repairing the stone fence. Hollingsworth, I observed, wrought like a Titan ; and, for my own part, I lifted stones which at this day — or, in a calmer mood, at that one — I should no more have thought it possible to stir than to carry off the gates of Gaza on my back. XVI. LEAVE-TAKINGS. A FEW days after the tragic passage-at-arms be- tween Hollingsworth and me, I appeai-ed at the din- ner-table actually dressed in a coat, instead of my cus- tomary blouse ; with a satin cravat, too, a white vest, and several other things that made me seem strange and outlandish to myself. As for my companions, this unwonted spectacle caused a great stir upon the wooden benches that bordered either side of our homely board. " What 's in the wind now, Miles ? " asked one of them. " Are you deserting us ? " "Yes, for a week or two," said I. "It strikes me that my health demands a little relaxation of labor, and a short visit to the sea^side, dm-ing the dog-days." " You look like it ! " grumbled Silas Foster, not greatly pleased with the idea of losing an efficient la- borer before the stress of the season was well over. " Now, here 's a pretty fellow ! His shoidders have broadened a matter of six inches, since he came among us ; he can do his day's work, if he likes, with any man or ox on the farm; and yet he talks about going to the sea-shore for his health ! Well, well, old wo- man," added he to his wife, " let me have a plateful of that pork and cabbage ! I begin to feel in a very weakly way. When the others have had their turn, you and I will take a jaunt to New[)ort or Saratoga ! " LEA VE- TA KINGS. 477 " Well, but, Mr. Foster," said I, " you must allow me to take a little breath." " Breath ! " retorted the old yeoman. "Your lungs have the play of a pair of blacksmith's bellows al- ready. What on earth do you want more ? But go along ! I understand the business. We shall never see your face here again. Here ends the reformation of the world, so far as Miles Coverdale has a hand in it ! " " By no means," I replied. " I am resolute to die in the last ditch, for the good of the cause." " Die in a ditch ! " muttered gruff Sdas, with genu- ine Yankee intolerance of any intermission of toil, ex- cept on Sunday, the Fourth of Jidy, the autumnal cat- tle-show, Thanksgiving, or the annual Fast, — " die in a ditch ! I believe, in my conscience, you would, if there were no steadier means than your own labor to keep you out of it I " The truth was, that an intolerable discontent and irksomeness had come over me. Blithedale was no longer what it had been. Everything was suddenly faded. The simburnt and arid aspect of our woods and pastures, beneath the August sky, did but imper- fectly symbolize the lack of dew and moisture, that, since yesterday, as it were, had bhghted my fields of thought, and penetrated to the innermost and shadiest of my contemplative recesses. The change will be recognized by many, who, after a period of happiness, have endeavored to go on ^dth the same kind of life, in the same scene, in spite of the alteration or with- drawal of some principal circmnstance. They discover (what heretofore, perhaps, they had not kno's\Ti) that it was this which gave the bright color and vivid real- ity to the whole affair. 478 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. I stood on other terms than before, not only with 1 lollings worth, but with Zenobia and Priseilla. As regarded the two latter, it was that dream - like and miserable sort of change that denies you the piivilege to complain, because you can assert no positive injury, nor lay your finger on anything tangible. It is a mat- ter which you do not see, but feel, and which, when you try to analyze it, seems to lose its very existence, and resolve itself into a sickly humor of your own. Your understanding, possibly, may put faith in this denial. But your heart will not so easily rest satis- fied. It incessantly remonstrates, though, most of the time, in a bass-note, which you do not separately dis- tinguish ; but, now and then, ^\dth a sharp cry, im- portunate to be heard, and resolute to claim beliefs " Things are not as they were ! " it keeps sajdng. " You shall not impose on me ! I will never be quiet ! 1 wiU throb painfidly ! I \\ ill be heavy, and desolate, and shiver vnth. cold ! For I, your deep heart, know when to be miserable, as once I knew when to be happy ! All is changed for us ! You are beloved no more I " And were my life to be spent over again, I would invariably lend my ear to this Cassandra of the inward depths, however clamorous the music and the merriment of a more superficial region. My outbreak with Hollingsworth, though never defi- nitely known to our associates, had really an effect upon the moral atmosphere of the Community. It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into which we had brought ourselves, that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two mem- bers without the whole society being more or less com- moted and made vuicomfortable thereby. This species of nervous sympathy (though a pretty characteristic LEA VE- TA KINGS. 479 enough, sentimentally considered, and apparently be- tokening an actual bond of love among" us) was yet found rather inconvenient in its practical operation ; mortal tempers being so infirm and variable as they are. If one of us happened to give his neighbor a box on the ear, the tingle was immediately felt on the same side of everybody's head. Thus, even on the supposition that we were far less qviarrelsome than the rest of the world, a great deal of time was necessarily wasted in rubbing our ears. Musing on all these matters, I felt an inexpressible longing for at least a temporary novelty. I thought of going across the Rocky Mountains, or to Eurojse, or up the Nile ; of offering myself a volunteer on the Exploring Expedition ; of taking a ramble of years, no matter in what direction, and coming back on the other side of the world. Then, should the colonists of Blithedale have established their enterprise on a per- manent basis, I might fling aside my pilgrim staff and dusty shoon, and rest as peacefully here as elsewhere. Or, in case Hollingsworth should occupy the ground with his School of Reform, as he now purposed, I might plead earthly guilt enough, by that time, to give me what I was inclined to think the only trust- worthy hold on his affections. Meanwhile, before de- ciding on any ultimate plan, I determined to remove myself to a little distance, and take an exterior view of what we had all been about. In truth, it was dizzy work, amid such fermentation of opinions as was going on in the general brain of the Community. It was a kind of Bedlam, for the time being, although out of the very thoughts that were wildest, and most destructive might grow a wisdom, holy, calm, and pure, and that should incarnate itself 480 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. witli the substance of a noble and hapi)y life. But, as matters now were, I felt myself (and, having a de- cided tendency towards the actual, I never liked to feel it) getting quite out of my reckoning, with regard to the existing state of the world. I was beginning to lose the sense of what kind of a world it was, among innumerable schemes of what it might or ought to be. It was impossible, situated as we were, not to imbibe the idea that everything in nature and human exist- ence was fluid, or fast becoming so ; that the crust of the earth in many places was broken, and its whole surface portentously upheaving ; that it was a day of crisis, and that we ourselves were in the critical vortex. Our great globe floated in the atmosj^here of infinite space like an unsubstantial bubble. No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without peri- odically returning into the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old stand-point. It was now time for me, therefore, to go and hold a little talk with the conservatives, the writers of " The North American Review," the merchants, the politi- cians, the Cambridge men, and all those respectable old blockheads, who still, in this intangibility and mistiness of affairs, kept a death-grip on one or two ideas which had not come into vogue since yesterday morning. The brethren took leave of me with cordial kind- ness ; and as for the sisterhood, I had serious thoughts of kissing them all round, but forbore to do so, be- cause, in all such general salutations, the penance is fully equal to the pleasure. So I kissed none of them : and nobody, to say the truth, seemed to expect it. LEAVE-TAKINGS. 481 " Do you wish me," I said to Zenobia, " to an- nounce in town, and at the watering-places, your pur- pose to deliver a course of lectures on the rights of women ? " " Women possess no rights," said Zenobia, with a half -melancholy smile ; " or, at all events, only little girls and grandmothers would have the force to ex- ercise them." She gave me her hand freely and kindly, and looked at me, I thought, with a pitying expression in her eyes ; nor was there any settled light of joy in them on her own behalf, but a troubled and passionate flame, flickering and fitful. " I regret, on the whole, that you are leaving us," she said ; " and all the more, since I feel that this phase of our life is finished, and can never be lived over again. Do you know, Mr. Coverdale, that I have been several times on the point of making you my confidant, for lack of a better and wiser one? But you are too young to be my father confessor ; and you would not thank me for treating you like one of those good little handmaidens who share the bosom secrets of a tragedy-queen." " I would, at least, be loyal and faithful," answered I ; " and would counsel you with an honest purpose, if not wisely." " Yes," said Zenobia, " you would be only too wise, too honest. Honesty and wisdom are such a delight- ful pastime, at another person's expense ! " " Ah, Zenobia," I exclaimed, " if you would but let me speak ! " " By no means," she replied, " especially when you have just resumed the whole series of social conven- tionalisms, together with that strait - bodied coat. I VOL. V. 31 482 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. would as lief open my heart to a lawyer or a clergy- man ! No, no, Mr. Coverdale ; if I choose a counsellor, in the present aspect of my affairs, it must be either an angel or a madman ; and I rather apprehend that the latter would be likeliest of the two to speak the fit- ting word. It needs a wild steersman when we voy- age through chaos ! The anchor is uj), — farewell ! " Priseilla, as soon as dinner was over, had betaken herself into a corner, and set to work on a little purse. As I approached her, she let her eyes rest on me with a calm, serious look : for, with all her delicacy of nerves, there was a singular self-possession in Pris- eilla, and her sensibilities seemed to lie sheltered from ordinary commotion, like the water in a deep well. " Will you give me that purse, Priseilla," said I, " as a parting keepsake ? " " Yes," she answered, " if you will wait till it is finished." " I must not wait, even for that," I replied. " Shall I find you here, on my return?" " I never wish to go away," said she. " I have sometimes thought," observed I, smiling, " that you, Priseilla, are a little prophetess, or, at least, that you have spiritual intimations respecting matters which are dark to us grosser people. If that be the case, I should like to ask you what is about to happen ; for I am tormented with a strong foreboding that, were I to return even so soon as to-morrow morning, I should find everii;hing changed. Have you any im- pressions of this nature ? " " Ah, no," said Priseilla, looking at me, apprehen- sively. " If any such misfortune is coming, the shadow has not reached me yet. Heaven forbid ! I should be glad if there might never be any change, but one sum- mer follow another, and all just like this," LEA VE~TAKINGS> 483 •' No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike," said I, with a degree of Orphic wisdom that astonished myseK. " Times change, and people change ; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us. Good -by, Pris- cilla ! " I gave her hand a pressure, which, I think, she neither resisted nor returned. Priscilla's heart was deep, but of small compass ; it had room but for a very few dearest ones, among whom she never reck- oned me. On the doorstep I met Hollingsworth. I had a momentary impulse to hold out my hand, or at least, to give a parting nod, but resisted both. When a real and strong affection has come to an end, it is not well to mock the sacred past with any show of those com- monj)lace civilities that belong to ordinary intercourse. Being dead henceforth to him, and he to me, there could be no propriety in our chilling one another with the touch of two corpse-like hands, or playing at looks of courtesy with eyes that were impenetrable beneath the glaze and the film. We passed, therefore, as if mutually invisible. I can nowdse exjjlain what sort of whim, prank, or perversity it was, that, after all these leave-takings, induced me to go to the pigsty, and take leave of the swine ! There they lay, buried as deeply among the straw as they could burrow, four huge black grunters, the very sjTubols of slothfid ease and sensual comfort. They were asleep, drawing short and heavy breaths, which heaved their big sides up and down. Unclos- ing their eyes, however, at vnj approach, they looked dimly forth at the outer world, and simidtaneously ut- tered a gentle grunt; not putting themselves to the 484 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. trouble of an additional breath for that particular pur pose, but grunting with their ordinary inhalation. They were involved, and almost stifled and buried alive, in their own corporeal substance. The very un- readiness and oppression wherewith these greasy citi- zens gained breath enough to keep their life-machinery in sluggish movement, appeared to make them only the more sensible of the ponderous and fat satisfaction of their existence. Peeping at me, an instant, out of their small, red, hardly perceptible eyes, they dropt asleep again ; yet not so far asleep but that their unctuous bliss was still present to them, betwixt dream and reality. " You must come back in season to eat part of a spare-rib," said Silas Foster, gi\"ing my hand a mighty squeeze. " I shall have these fat fellows hanging up by the heels, heads downward, pretty soon, I tell you!" " O cruel Silas, what a horrible idea ! " cried I. *' All the rest of us, men, women, and live-stock, save only these four porkers, are bedevilled with one grief or another ; they alone are happy, — and you mean to cut their thi'oats and eat them ! It would be more for the General comfort to let them eat us: and bitter and sour morsels we should be ! " XVII. THE HOTEL. Arriving in town (where my bachelor-rooms, long before this time, had received some other occupant), I established myself, for a day or two, in a certain re- spectable hotel. It was situated somewhat aloof from my former track in life ; my present mood inclining me to avoid most of my old companions, from whom I was now sundered by other interests, and who woidd have been likely enough to amuse themselves at the ex- pense of the amateur workingman. The hotel-keeper put me into a back room of the third story of his spa- cious establislunent. The day was lowering, with oc- casional gusts of rain, and an ugly-tempered east- wind, which seemed to come right off the chill and melan- choly sea, hardly mitigated by sweeping over the roofs, and amalgamating itself with the dusky ele- ment of city smoke. All the effeminacy of past days had returned upon me at once. Summer as it still was, I ordered a coal-fire in the rusty grate, and was glad to find myself growing a little too warm with an artificial temperature. My sensations were those of a traveller, long so- journing in remote regions, and at length sitting down asrain amid customs once familiar. There was a new- ness and an oldness oddly combining themselves into one impression. It made me acutely sensible how strange a piece of mosaic-work had lately been wrought 486 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. into my life. True, if you look at it in one way, it had been only a summer in the coimtry. But, con- sidered in a profounder relation, it was part of an- other age, a different state of society, a segment of an existence peculiar in its aims and methods, a leaf of some mysterious vohune interpolated into the current history which time was writing off. At one moment, the very ciremnstances now surrounding me — -my coal-fire, and the dingy room in the bustling hotel — appeared far off and intangible ; the next instant Blithedale looked vague, as if it were at a distance both in time and space, and so shadowy that a ques- tion might be raised whether the whole affair had been anything more than the thoughts of a speculative man. I had never before experienced a mood that so robbed the actual world of its solidity. It neverthe- less involved a charm, on which — a devoted epicure of my own emotions — I resolved to pause, and enjoy the moral sillabub imtil quite dissolved away. Whatever had been my taste for solitude and nat- ural scenery, yet the thick, foggy, stifled element of cities, the entangled life of many men together, sordid as it was, and empty of the beautifid, took quite as strenuous a hold upon my mind. I felt as if there could never be enough of it. Each characteristic sound was too suggestive to be passed over unnoticed. Beneath and aroimd me, I heard the stir of the hotel ; the loud voices of guests, landlord, or bar-keeper ; steps echoing on the staircase ; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or depai'tures ; the porter lumber- ing past my door with baggage, which he thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers ; the lighter feet of chambermaids scudding along the pas- sages ; — it is ridicidous to think what an interest they THE HOTEL. 487 had for me ! From the street came the tumult of the pavements, pervading the whole house with a contin- ual uproar, so broad and deep that only an unaccus- tomed ear would dwell upon it. A company of the city soldiery, with a full military band, marched in front of the hotel, invisible to me, but stirringly audi- ble both by its foot-tramp and the clangor of its in- struments. Once or twice all the city bells jangled together, announcing a fire, wliich brought out the engine-men and their machines, like an army with its artiUery rushing to battle. Hour by hour the clocks in many steeples responded one to another. In some public hall, not a great way off, there seemed to be an exhibition of a mechanical diorama ; for three times during the day occurred a repetition of obstreperous music, winding up with the rattle of imitative cannon and musketry, and a huge final explosion. Then en- sued the applause of the spectators, with clap of hands and thump of sticks, and the energetic pounding of their heels. All this was just as valuable, in its way, as the sighing of the breeze among the birch-trees that overshadowed Eliot's pulpit. Yet I felt a hesitation about plimging into this muddy tide of hmnan activity and pastime. It suited me better, for the present, to linger on the brink, or hover in the air above it. So I spent the first day, and the greater part of the second, in the laziest man- ner possible, in a rocking-chair, inhaling the fragrance of a series of cigars, with my legs and slippered feet horizontally disposed, and in my hand a novel pur- chased of a railroad bibliopolist. The gradual waste of my cigar accomplished itself with an easy and gen- tle expenditure of breath. My book was of the dull- est, yet had a sort of sluggish flow, like that of a 488 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. stream in which your boat is as often aground as afloat. Had there been a more impetuous rush, a more absorbing passion of the narrative, I shoidd the sooner have struggled out of its uneasy current, and liave given myself up to the swell and subsidence of my thoughts. But, as it was, the torj^id life of the book served as an unobtrusive accompaniment to the life wdthin me and about me. At intervals, however, when its effect grew a little too soporific, — not for my patience, but for the possibility of keeping my eyes open, — I bestirred myself, started from the rocking- chair, and looked out of the window. A gray sky ; the weathercock of a steeple, that rose beyond the opposite range of buildings, pointing from the eastward ; a sprinkle of small, spitef id - looking rain-drops on the window-pane. In that ebb-tide of my energies, had I thought of venturing abroad, these tokens woidd have cheeked the abortive purpose. After several such \asits to the window, I found myself getting pretty well acquainted witli that little portion of the backside of the universe which it pre- sented to my view. Over against the hotel and its adjacent houses, at the distance of forty or fifty yards, was the rear of a range of buildings, wliich appeared to be spacious, modern, and calculated for fashionable residences. The interval between was apportioned into grass-plots, and here and there an apology for a garden, pertaining severally to these dwellings. There were apple-trees, and pear and peach-trees, too, the fruit on wliich looked singularly large, luxuriant, and abundant, as well it might, in a situation so warm and sheltered, and where the soil had doubtless been en- riched to a more than natural fertilit}\ In two or three places grape-vines clambered upon trellises, and THE HOTEL. 489 bore clusters already purple, and promising the rich- ness of Malta or Madeira in their ripened juice. The blighting winds of our rigid climate could not molest these trees and vines ; the sunshine, though descend- ing late into this area, and too early intercepted by the height of the surrounding houses, yet lay tropic- ally there, even when less than temperate in every other region. Dreary as was the day, the scene was illviminated by not a few sparrows and other birds, which spread their wings, and flitted and fluttered, and alighted now here, now there, and busily scratched their food out of the wormy earth. Most of these winged people seemed to have their domicile in a ro- bust and healthy button wood-ti'ee. It aspired upward, high above the roof of the houses, and spread a dense head of foliage half across the area. There was a cat — as there invariably is in such places — who evidently thought herself entitled to the privileges of forest-life in this close heart of city con- ventionalisms. I watched her creeping along the low, flat roofs of the offices, descending a flight of wooden steps, gliding among the grass, and besieging the but- tonwood-tree, with murderous purpose against its feathered citizens. But, after all, they were birds of city breeding, and doubtless knew how to guard them- selves against the peculiar perils of their position. Bewitching to my fancy are all those nooks and crannies, where Nature, like a stray partridge, hides her head among the long-established haimts of men ! It is likewise to be remarked, as a general rule, that there is far more of the picturesque, more truth to na- tive and characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater suggestiveness in the back view of a residence, whether in town or country, than in its front. The latter is 490 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. always artificial ; it is meant for the world's eye, and is therefore a veil and a concealment. Realities keep in the rear, and put forward an advance-guard of show and humbug. The posterior aspect of any old farm- house, behind which a railroad has unexpectedly been opened, is so different from that looking upon the im- memorial highway, that the si)ectator gets new ideas of rural life and individuality in the puff or two of steam-breath which shoots him past the premises. In a city, the distinction between what is offered to the public and what is kept for the family is certainly not less striking. But, to retvirn to my window, at the back of the ho- tel. Together ^^^th a due contemplation of the fruit- trees, the grape -^^nes, the button wood - tree, the cat, the birds, and many other particulars, I failed not to study the row of fashionable dwellings to which all these appertained. Here, it must be confessed, there was a general sameness. From the upper story to the first floor, they were so much alike, that I could only conceive of the inhabitants as cut out on one identical pattern, like little wooden toy-people of German man- ufacture. One long, united roof, with its thousands of slates glittering in the rain, extended over the whole. After the distinctness of separate characters, to which I had recently been accustomed, it perplexed and annoyed me not to be able to resolve this combi- nation of human interests into well-defined elements. It seemed hardly worth wMe for more than one of those families to be in existence, since they all had the same glimpse of the sky, all looked into the same area, all received just their equal share of simshine through the front windows, and all listened to precisely the same noises of the street on which they boarded. Men THE HOTEL. 491 are so much alike in tlieir nature, that they grow intol- erable unless varied by their circumstances. Just about this time, a waiter entered my room. The truth was, I had rung tlie bell and ordered a sherry-cobbler. " Can you tell me," I inquired, " what families re- side in any of those houses opposite ? " " The one right opposite is a rather stylish board- ing-house," said the waiter. " Two of the gentlemen- boarders keep horses at the stable of our establish- ment. They do tilings in very good style, sir, the peo- ple that live there." I might have found out nearly as much for myself, on examining the house a little more closely. In one of the upper chambers I saw a yoimg man in a dress- ing gown, standing before the glass and brushing his hair, for a quarter of an hour together. He then spent an equal space of time in the elaborate arrangement of his cravat, and finally made Ms appearance in a dress- coat, which I suspected to be newly come from the tailor's, and now first put on for a dinner-party. At a window of the next story below, two children, pret- tily dressed, were looking out. By and by, a middle- aged gentleman came softly behind them, kissed the little girl, and playfully pulled the little boy's ear. It was a j)apa, no doubt, just come in from his counting- room or office ; and anon appeared mamma, stealing as softly behind papa as he had stolen behind the chil- dren, and lajang her hand on his shoidder, to sm-prise him. Then followed a kiss between papa and mamma ; but a noiseless one, for the children did not turn their heads. " I bless God for these good folks ! " thought I to myself. " I have not seen a prettier bit of nature, in 492 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. all my summer in the eoimtry, than they have shown nic here, in a rather stylish boarding-house. I will pay them a little more attention by and by. On the first floor, an iron balustrade ran along in front of the tall and spacious windows, evidently be- longing to a back drawing-room ; and, far into the in- terior, through the arch of the sliding-doors, I could discern a gleam from the Avindows of the front apart- ment. There were no signs of present occupancy in this suite of rooms ; tlic curtains being enveloped in a protective covering, which allowed but a small portion of their crimson material to be seen. But two house- maids were industriously at work ; so that there was good prospect that the boarding-house might not long suffer from the absence of its most expensive and prof- itable guests. Meanwhile, until they should appear, I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions. There, in the dusk that so early settles into such places, I saw the red glow of the kitchen-range. The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a ladle in her hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back door. As soon as she disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket, crept slyly forth, and threw away the fragments of a china dish, which, unquestionably, he had just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady, showily dressed, with a curling front of what must have been false hair, and reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue, — though my remoteness allowed me oidy to guess at such par- ticulars, — tliis respectable mistress of the boarding- house made a momentary transit across the kitchen- window, and appeared no more. It was her final, comprehensive glance, in order to make sure that soup, fish, and flesh were in a proper state of readi- ness, before the serving up of dinner. THE HOTEL. 493 There was nothing else worth noticing about the house, unless it be that on the jjeak of one of the dor- mer-windows which opened out of the roof sat a dove, looking very dreary and forlorn ; insomuch that I won- dered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while her kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and comfortable dove-cote. All at once, this dove spread her wings, and, laiuiching herself in the air, came flying so straight across the intervening space that I fuUy expected her to alight directly on my win- dow-sill. In the latter part of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew upward, and vanished, as did, likewise, the slight, fantastic pathos with which I had invested her. XVIII. THE BOARDING-HOUSE. The next day, as soon as I thought of looking again towards the opposite house, there sat the dove again, on the peak of the same dormer-window ! It was by no means an early hour, for, the preced- ing evening, I had ultimately mustered enterprise enough to visit the theatre, had gone late to bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my remoteness from Silas Foster's awakening horn. Dreams had tormented me throughout the night. The train of thoughts which, for months past, had worn a track through my mind, and to escape which was one of my chief objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading remorselessly to and fro in their old footsteps, while slumber left me im- potent to regidate them. It was not till I had quit- ted my three friends that they first began to encroach upon my dreams. In those of the last night, Hollings- worth and Zenobia, standing on either side of my bed, had bent across it to exchange a kiss of passion. Pris- cilla, beholding this, — for she seemed to be peeping in at the chamber - window, — had melted gradually away, and left only the sadness of her exj)ression in my heart. There it still lingered, after I awoke ; one of those unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it involves nothing for com- mon-sense to clutch. It was a gray and dripping forenoon ; gloomy enough THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 495 in town, and still gloomier in tlie haunts to wliicli my recollections persisted in transj^orting me. For, in spite of my efforts to think of something else, I thought how the gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and valleys of our farm ; how wet must be the foliage that overshadowed the pulpit-rock ; how cheer- less, in such a day, my hermitage, — the tree-solitude of my owl-like humors, — in the vine-encircled heart of the tall pine ! It was a phase of homesickness. I had wrenched myself too suddenly out of an accus- tomed sphere. There was no choice, now, but to bear the pang of whatever heartstrings were snapt asimder, and that illusive torment (like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by which a past mode of life prolongs it- self into the succeeding one. I was full of idle and shapeless regrets. The thought impressed itself upon me that I had left duties miperformed. With the power, perhaps, to act in the place of destiny and avert misfortime from my friends, I had resigned them to their fate. That cold tendency, between instinct and intellect, which made me pry with a sj)eculative inter- est into people's passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing my heart. But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is cold or warm. It now impresses me that, if I erred at all in regard to HoUingsworth, Ze- nobia, and Priscilla, it was through too much sympa- thy, rather than too little. To escape the irksomeness of these meditations, I resumed my post at the window. At first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. The general aspect of affairs was the same as yesterday, except that the more decided inclemency of to-day had driven the sparrows to shelter, and kept the cat within doors ; whence, 496 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. however, she soon emerged, pursued by the cook, and with what looked like the better half of a roast chicken in her mouth. The young man in the dress- coat was invisible ; the two children, in the story be- low, seemed to be romi)ing about the room, under the superintendence of a nursery-maid. The damask cur- tains of the drawing-room, on the first floor, were now fidly displayed, festooned gracefidly from top to bot- tom of the windows, which extended from the ceiling to the carpet. A narrower window, at the left of the dra\ving-room, gave light to what was probably a small boudoir, within which I caught the faintest imagina- ble glimpse of a girl's figure, in airy drapery. Her arm was in regidar movement, as if she were busy with her German worsted, or some other such pretty and unprofitable handiwork. While intent upon making out this girlish shape, I became sensible that a figure had appeared at one of the windows of the drawing-room. There was a pre- sentiment in my mind; or perhaps my first glance, imperfect and sidelong as it was, had sufficed to con- vey subtile information of the truth. At any rate, it was with no positive surprise, but as if I had all along expected the incident, that, directing my eyes thither- ward, I beheld — like a full-length picture, in the space between the heavy festoons of the window-cur- tains — no other than Zenobia ! At the same instant, my thoughts made sure of the identity of the figure in the boudoir. It could only be Priscilla. Zenobia was attired, not in the almost rustic cos- tume which she had heretofore worn, but in a fashion- able morning-dress. There was, nevertheless, one fa- miliar point. She had, as usual, a flower in her hair, brilliant and of a rare variety, else it had not been Ze THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 497 nobia. After a brief pause at the window, she turned away, exemplifying, in the few steps that removed her out of sight, that noble and beautiful motion which characterized her as much as any other personal charm. Not one woman in a thousand could move so admi- rably as Zenobia. Many women can sit gracefully ; some can stand gracefully ; and a few, perhajss, can assmne a series of gracefid positions. But natural movement is the result and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly performed unless responsive to something in the character. I often used to think that music — light and airy, wild and pas- sionate, or the full harmony of stately marches, in accordance with her varying mood — should have at- tended Zenobia's footsteps. I waited for her reappearance. It was one peculi- arity, distinguishing Zenobia from most of her sex, that she needed for her moral well-being, and never would forego, a large amount of physical exercise. At Blithedale, no inclemency of sky or muddiness of earth had ever impeded her daily walks. Here, in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements. Accordingly, in about the time requisite to pass through the arch of the slid- ing-doors to the front window, and to return upon her steps, there she stood again, between the festoons of the crimson curtains. But another personage was now added to the scene. Behind Zenobia appeared that face which I had first encountered in the wood-path ; the man who had passed, side by side with her, in such mysterious familiarity and estrangement, beneath my vine-curtained hermitage in the tall pine-tree. It VOL. V. 32 498 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. was Westervelt. And though ho was looking closely over her shoulder, it still seemed to me, as on the former occasion, that ZenoLia repelled him, — that, perchance, they mutually repelled each other, by some incompatibility of their spheres. Thisinipressiona__however, might have been alto- gether the resultjof fan£y_and prejudice^ in me. The distaiice wasso great as to obliterate any play of fea- ture by which I might otherwise have been made a partaker of their counsels. There now needed only Hollingsworth and old Moodie to complete the knot of characters, whom a real intricacy of events, greatly assisted by my method of insulating them from other relations, had kept so long upon my mental stage, as actors in a drama. In itself, perhaps, it was no very remarkable event that they slioidd thus come across me, at the moment when I imagined myself free. Zenobia, as I well knew, had retained an establishment in town, and had not un- frecpiently withdrawn herself from Blithedale during brief intervals, on one of which occasions she had taken Priscilla along with her. Nevertheless, there seemed something fatal in the coincidence that had borne me to this one spot, of all others in a great city, and transfixed me there, and compelled me again to waste my already wearied sympathies on affairs which were none of mine, and persons who cared little for me. It irritated my nerves ; it affected me with a kind of heart-sickness. After the effort which it cost me to fling them off, — after consummating my escape, as I thought, from these goblins of flesh and blood, and pausing to revive myself with a breath or two of an atmosphere in which they should have no share, — ■ it was a positive despair, to find the same figiu'es THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 499 arraying themselves before me, and presenting theii' old problem in a shape that made it more insoluble than ever. I began to long for a catastrophe. If the noble temper of Hollings worth's soul were doomed to be utterly corruj)ted by the too powerful purpose which had grown out of what was noblest in him ; if the rich ' and generous qualities of Zenobia's womanhood might not save her ; if Priscilla must perish by her tender- ness and faith, so simple and so devout, — then be it so ! Let it all come ! As for me, I would look on, as it seemed my part to do, understandingiy, if my intel- lect could fathom the meaning and the moral, and, at all events, reverently and sadly. The curtain fallen, I would pass onward with my poor individual life, which was now attenuated of much of its proper sub- stance, and diffused among many alien interests. Meanwhile, Zenobia and her companion had re- treated from the window. Then followed an interval, during which I directed my eyes towards the figure in the boudoir. Most certainly it was Priscilla, although dressed with a novel and fanciful elegance. The vague perception of it, as viewed so far off, imjjressed me as if she had suddenly passed out of a chiysalis state and put forth wings. Her hands were not now in motion. She had dropt her work, and sat with her head thrown back, in the same attitude that I had seen several times before, when she seemed to be listening to an imperfectly distinguished soimd. Again the two figures in the drawing-room became visible. They were now a little withdrawn from the window, face to face, and, as I could see by Zenobia's emphatic gestures, were discussing some subject in which she, at least, felt a passionate concern. By 500 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. and Ly she broke away, and vanished beyond my ken. AVesteivelt approached the window, and leaned his forehead against a pane of glass, displaying the sort of smile on his handsome features which, when I be- fore met liim, had let me into the secret of his gold- bordered teeth. Every hmnan being, when given over to the Devil, is sure to have the wizard mark upon him, in one form or another. I fancied that this smile, with its peculiar revelation, was the Devil's signet on the Professor. This man, as I had soon reason to know, was en- dowed with a cat - like circumspection ; and though precisely the most unspiritual quality in the world, it was almost as effective as spiritual insight in making him acquainted with whatever it suited him to dis- cover. He now proved it, considerably to my discom- fitiu'e, by detecting and recognizing me, at my post of observation. Perhaps I ought to have blushed at being caught in such an evident scrutiny of Professor Westervelt and his affairs. Perhaps I did blush. Be that as it might, I retained presence of mind enough not to make my position yet more irksome, by the poltroonery of dra^\dng back. Westervelt looked into the depths of the drawing- room, and beckoned. Immediately afterwards Zeno- bia appeared at the window, with color much height- ened, and eyes which, as my conscience whispered me, were shooting bright arrows, barbed with scorn, across the intervening space, directed full at my sensil)ilities as a gentleman. If the truth must be told, far as her flight-shot was, those arrows hit the maik. She signified her recognition of me by a gesture with her head and hand, comprising at once a salutation and dismissal. The next moment, she administered one of THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 501 those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has at hand, ready for any offence (and which she so seldom spares on due occasion), by letting down a white linen curtain between the festoons of the damask ones. It fell like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the interval between the acts. Priscilla had disappeared from the boudoir. But the dove still kept her desolate perch on the peak of the attic-window. XIX. zenobia's drawing-room. '^^ The remainder of the day, so far as I was con- cerned, was spent in meditating* on these recent inci- dents. I contrived, and alternately rejected, innu- merable methods of accomiting for the presence of Zenobia and Priscilla, and the connection of Wester- velt with both. It must be owned, too, that I had a keen, revengeful sense of the insidt inflicted by Ze- nobia's scornful recognition, and more particidarly by her letting down the curtain; as if such were the proper barrier to be interposed between a character like hers and a perceptive facidty like mine. For, was mine a mere vidgar curiosity? Zenobia should have known me better than to suppose it. She should have been able to appreciate that quality of the intel- lect and the heart wliich impelled me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own com- fort) to live in other lives, and to endeavor — by gen- erous sympathies, by delicate intuitions, by taking- note of things too slight for record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the companions whom God assigned me — to learn the secret which was hidden even from themselves. Of all possible observers, methought a woman like Zenobia and a man like Hollingsworth should have selected me. And now when the event has long been past, I retain the same opinion of my fitness for the ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM. 503 office. True, I might have condemned them. Had I been judge as well as witness, my sentence might have been stern as that of destiny itself. But, still, no trait of original nobility of character, no struggle against temptation, — no iron necessity of will, on the one hand, nor extenuating circumstance to be derived from passion and despair, on the other, — no remorse that might coexist with error, even if powerless to prevent it, — no proud repentance that should claim retribu- tion as a meed, — would go unappreciated. True, again, I might give my full assent to the punishment which was sure to follow. But it would be given mournfully, and with midiminished love. And, after all was finished, I would come, as if to gather up the white ashes of those who had perished at the stake, and to tell the world — the wrong being now atoned for — how much had perished there which it had never yet known how to praise. I sat in my rocking-chair, too far withdrawn from the window to expose myself to another rebuke like that already inflicted. My eyes stiU wandered to- wards the opposite house, but without effecting any new discoveries. Late in the afternoon, the weather- cock on the church-spire indicated a change of wind; the Sim shone dimly out as if the golden wine of its beams were mingled half-and-half with water. Nev- ertheless, they kindled up the whole range of edifices, threw a glow over the windows, glistened on the wet roofs, and, slowly withdrawing upward, perched upon the chimney-tops; thence they took a higher flight, and lingered an instant on the tip of the spire, making it the final point of more cheerful light in the whole sombre scene. The next moment, it was all gone. The twilight fell into the area like a shower of dusky 604 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. snow, and before it was quite dark, the gong of the hotel summoned me to tea. When I returned to my chamber, the glow of an astral-lamp was penetrating mistily through the white curtain of Zenobia's drawing-room. The shadow ofa. passing figure was now and then cast upoiTthis me- ^um, but with too vagueZan outlihe for even my ad- venturous conjectures, tQ__read the hieroglyphic that it presented. All at once, it occurred to me how very absurd was my behavior in thus tormenting myself with crazy hypotheses as to what was going on within that draw- ing-room, when it was at my option to be personally present there. My relations with Zenobia, as yet mi- changed, — as a familiar friend, and associated in the same life-long enterprise, — gave me the right, and made it no more than kindly courtesy demanded, to call on her. Nothing, except our habitual indepen- dence of conventional riUes at Blithedale, coidd have kept me from sooner recognizing this duty. At all events, it should now be performed. In compliance with this sudden impulse, I soon found myself actually wdtliin the house, the rear of which, for two days past, I had been so sedulously watcliing. A servant took my card, and immediately retm-ning, ushered me up stairs. On the way, I heard a rich, and, as it were, trimnphant burst of music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's character, although heretofore I had knoNA^i nothing of her skill upon the instrument. Two or three canary-birds, ex- cited by this gush of sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to pi-oduce a kindred melody. A bright illumination streamed through the door of the front drawing - room ; and I had barely stept across the ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM. 505 threshold before Zenobia came forward to meet me, laughing, and with an extended hand. " Ah, Mr. Coverdale," said she, still smiling, but, as I thought, with a good deal of scornful anger un- derneath, " it has gratified me to see the interest which you continue to take in my affairs ! I have long recognized you as a sort of transcendental Yan- kee, with all the native propensity of your country- men to investigate matters that come within their range, but rendered almost poetical, in your case, by the refined methods which you adopt for its gratifica- tion. After all, it was an unjustifiable stroke, on my part, — was it not ? — to let down the window-cur- tain ! " " I cannot call it a very wise one," returned I, with a secret bitterness, which, no doubt, Zenobia appreci- ated. "It is really impossible to hide anything, in this world, to say nothing of the next. All that we ought to ask, therefore, is, that the witnesses of our conduct, and the sj)ecidators on om' motives, shoidd be capable of taking the highest view which the circiun- stances of the case may admit. So much being se- cured, I, for one, would be most happy in feeling my- self followed everywhere by an indefatigable human sympathy." "We must trust for intelligent sympathy to our guardian angels, if any there be," said Zenobia. "As long as the only spectator of my poor tragedy is a young man at the window of his hotel, I must still claim the liberty to drop the curtain." While this passed, as Zenobia's hand was extended, I had applied the very slightest touch of my fingers to her own. In spite of an external freedom, her man- ner made me sensible that we stood upon no real 506 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. terms of confidence. The tlionght came sadly across me, how great was the contrast bet^vixt this interview and our first meeting. Then, in the warm light of the coimtry fireside, Zenobia had greeted me cheerily and hopefully, with a full sisterly grasp of the hand, conveying as much kindness in it as other women could have evinced by the pressure of both arms around my neck, or by yielding a cheek to the broth- erly salute. The difference was as complete as be- tween her appearance at that time — so simply attired, and with only the one superb flower in her hair — and now, when her beauty was set off by all that dress and ornament could do for it. And they did much. Not, indeed, that they created or added anything to what Nature had lavishly done for Zenobia. But, those costly robes which she had on, those flaming jewels on her neck, served as lamps to display the per- sonal advantages which required nothing less than such an illumination to be fully seen. Even her char- acteristic flower, though it seemed to be still there, had undergone a cold and bright transfiguration ; it was a flower exquisitely imitated in jeweller's work, and imparting the last touch that transformed Zeno- bia into a work of art. " I scarcely feel," I coidd not forbear saying, " as if we had ever met before. How many years ago it seems since we last sat beneath Eliot's pulpit, with Hollingsworth extended on the fallen leaves, and Pris- cilla at his feet ! Can it be, Zenobia, that you ever really niunbered yourself with our little band of ear- nest, thoughtful, philanthropic laborers ? " " Those ideas have their time and place," she an- swered, coldly. " But I fancy it must be a very cir- cumscribed mind that can find room for no other." ZENOBIA 'S DRA WING-ROOM. 507 Her manner bewildered me. Literally, moreover, I was dazzled by the brilliancy of the room. A chande- lier hung down in the centre, glowing with I know not how many lights ; there were separate lamps, also, on two or three tables, and on marble brackets, adding their white radiance to that of the chandelier. The furniture was exceedingly rich. Fresh from our old farm-house, with its homely board and benches iu the dining-room, and a few wicker chairs in the best par- lor, it struck me that here was the fulfilment of every fantasy of an imagination revelling in various meth- ods of costly self-indulgence and splendid ease. Pic- tures, marbles, vases, — in brief, more shapes of lux- lu'y than there could be any object in enumerating, except for an auctioneer's advertisement, — and the whole repeated and doubled by the reflection of a great mirror, which showed me Zenobia's proud fig- ure, likewise, and my own. It cost me, I acknowl- edge, a bitter sense of shame, to perceive in myself a positive effort to bear up against the effect which Zenobia sought to imj)ose on me. I reasoned against her, in my secret mind, and strove so to keep my foot- ing". In the gorgeousness with which she had sur- rounded herself, — in the redundance of personal or- nament, which the largeness of her physical nature and the rich tjqie of her beauty caused to seem so suitable, — I malevolently beheld the true character of the woman, passionate, luxurious, lacking simplic- ity, not deeply refined, incapable of pure and perfect taste. But, the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing struggles. I saw how fit it was that she should make herself as gorgeous as she pleased, and should do a thousand things that would have been 508 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. ridiculous in the poor, thin, weakly characters of other women. To this clay, however, I hardly know whether I then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether that were the truer one in which she had presented herself at Blithedale. In both, there was something like the illusion which a great actress flings around her. " Have you given up Blithedale forever ? " I in- quired. " Why should you think so ? " asked she. " I cannot tell," answered I ; " except that it ap- pears all like a dream that we were ever there to- gether." " It is not so to me," said Zenobia. " I shoidd think it a poor and meagre nature that is capable of but one set of forms, and must convert all the past into a dream merely because the present happens to be unlike it. Why should we be content with our homely life of a few months past, to the exclusion of all other modes ? It was good ; but there are other lives as good, or better. Not, you will understand, that I condemn those who give themselves up to it more entirely than I, for myself, should deem it wise to do." It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified approval and criticism of a system to which many individuals — perhaps as higlily endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia — had contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I de- termined to make proof if there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should be compelled to give me a glimpse of something true ; some natiue, some passion, no matter whether right or wrong, provided it were real. ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM. 509 " Your allusion to that class of circumscribed char- acters, who can live only in one mode of life," re- marked I, coolly, " reminds me of our poor friend Hollings worth. Possibly he was in your thoughts when you spoke thus. Poor fellow ! It is a pity that, by the fault of a narrow education, he should have so completely immolated himself to that one idea of his, especially as the slightest modicum of common- sense would teach him its utter impracticability. Now that I have returned into the world, and can look at his project from a distance, it requires quite all my real regard for this respectable and well-intentioned man, to prevent me laughing at him, — as I find so- ciety at large does." Zenobia's eyes darted lightning, her cheeks flushed, the vividness of her expression was like the effect of a powerful light flaming up suddenly within her. My experiment had fully succeeded. She had shown me the true flesh and blood of her heart, by thus invol- untarily resenting my slight, pitying, half -kind, half- scornful mention of the man who was all in all with her. She herself probably felt this ; for it was hardly a moment before she tranquillized her uneven breath, and seemed as proud and self-possessed as ever. " I rather imagine," said she, quietly, " that your appreciation falls short of Mr. HoUingsworth's just claims. Blind enthusiasm, absorption in one idea, I grant, is generally ridiculous, and must be fatal to the respectability of an ordinary man ; it requires a very high and powerful character to make it otherwise. But a great man — as, perhaps, you do not know — attains his normal condition only through the inspi- ration of one great idea. As a friend of Mr. Hol- lingsworth, and, at the same time, a calm observer, 1 510 THE BLITllEDALE ROMANCE. must tell you that he seems to me such a man. But you are very pardonable for fancying him ridiculous. Doubtless, he is so — to you ! There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the facidty of distin- guishing heroism from absurdity." I dared make no retort to Zenobia's concluding apo- thegm. In truth, I admired her fidelity. It gave me a new sense of Hollingsworth's native power, to dis- cover that his influence was no less potent with this beautiful woman, here, in the midst of artificial life, than it had been at the foot of the gray rock, and among the wild birch-trees of the wood-path, when she so passionately pressed his hand against her heart. The great, rude, shaggy, swai-thy man ! And Zenobia loved him ! " Did you bring Priscilla with you ? " I resumed. " Do you know I have sometimes fancied it not quite safe, considering the susceptibility of her temperament, that she should be so constantly within the sphere of a man like Hollingsworth. Such tender and delicate natures, among your sex, have often, I believe, a very adequate appreciation of the heroic element in men. But then, again, I should suppose them as likely as any other women to make a reciprocal impression. Hollingsworth could hardly give his affections to a person capable of taking an independent stand, but only to one whom he might absorb into himself. He has certainly shown great tenderness for Priscilla." Zenobia had turned aside. But I caught the reflec- tion of her face in the mirror, and saw that it was very pale, — as pale, in her rich attire, as if a shroud were round her. " Priscilla is here," said she, her voice a little lower ZENOBIA'S DRAWING-ROOM. 511 than usual, " Have not you learnt as much from your chamber-window ? Would you like to see her ? " She made a step or two into the back drawing-room, and called, " Priscilla ! Dear Priscilla ! " XX. THEY VANISH. Priscilla immediately answered the summons, and made her appearance through the door of the boudoir. I had conceived the idea, which I now recognized as a very foolish one, that Zenobia would have taken measures to debar me from an interview with this girl, between whom and herself there was so utter an oppo- sition of their dearest interests, that, on one part or the other, a great grief, if not likewise a great wrong, seemed a matter of necessity. But, as Priscilla was only a leaf floating on the dark current of events, with- out influencing them by her own choice or plan, — as she probably guessed not whither the stream was bear- ing her, nor perhaps even felt its inevitable movement, — there could be no peril of her communicating to me any intelligence with regard to Zenobia's purposes. On perceiving me, she came forward with great qui- etude of manner ; and when I held out my hand, her own moved slightly towards it, as if attracted by a feeble degree of magnetism. " I am glad to see you, my dear Priscilla," said I, still holding her hand ; " but everything that I meet with nowadays makes me wonder whether I am awake. You, especially, have always seemed like a figure in a dream, and now more than ever." " Oh, there is substance in these fingers of mine," she answered, giving my hand the faintest possible THEY VANISH. 513 pressure, and tlien taking away her own. " Why do you call me a dream? Zenobia is much more like one than I ; she is so very, very beautif id ! And, I sup- pose," added Priscilla, as if thinking aloud, " every- body sees it, as I do." But, for my part, it was Priscilla's beauty, not Zeno- bia's, of which I was thinking at that moment. She was a person who coidd be quite obliterated, so far as beauty went, by anytliing unsuitable in her attire ; her charm was not positive and material enough to bear up against a mistaken choice of color, for instance, or fashion. It was safest, in her case, to attempt no art of dress ; for it demanded the most perfect taste, or else the happiest accident in the world, to give her pre- cisely the adornment which she needed. She was now dressed in pure white, set off with some kind of a gauzy fabric, which — as I bring up her figure in my mem- ory, with a faint gleam on her shadowy hair, and her dark eyes bent shyly on mine, through all the vanished years — seems to be floating about her like a mist. I wondered what Zenobia meant by evolving so much loveliness out of this poor girl. It was what few wo- men could afford to do ; for, as I looked from one to the other, the sheen and splendor of Zenobia's pres- ence took nothing from Priscilla's softer spell, if it might not rather be thought to add to it. " What do you think of her ? " asked Zenobia. I could not understand the look of melancholy kind- ness with which Zenobia regarded her. She advanced a step, and beckoning Priscilla near her, kissed her cheek ; then, with a slight gesture of repulse, she moved to the other side of the room. I followed. " She is a wonderful creature," I said. " Ever since she came among us, I have been dimly sensible of just VOL. V. 33 614 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. this charm which yoxi have brought out. But it was never absolutely visible till uow. She is as lovely as a flower ! " " AVell, say so if you like," answered Zenobia. " You are a poet, — at least, as poets go nowadays, — and must be allowed to make an opera-glass of your imag- ination, when you look at women. I wonder, in such Arcadian freedom of falling in love as we have lately enjoyed, it never occurred to you to fall in love \vith Priscilla. In society, indeed, a genuine American never dreams of stepping across the inappreciable air- line which separates one class from another. But what was rank to the colonists of Blithedale ? " " There were other reasons," I replied, " why I should have demonstrated myseK an ass, had I fallen in love with Priscilla. By the by, has Hollingsworth ever seen her in this dress ? " " Why do you bring up his name at every turn ? " asked Zenobia, in an undertone, and with a malign look which wandered from my face to Priscilla's. " You know not what you do ! It is dangerous, sir, believe me, to tamper thus with earnest human pas- sions, out of your own mere idleness, and for your sport. I will endure it no longer ! Take care that it does not happen again ! I warn you ! " "■ You partly ^\Tong me, if not wholly," I responded. " It is an uncertain sense of some duty to perform, that brings my thoughts, and therefore my words, con- tinually to that one point." " Oh, this stale excuse of duty ! said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. " I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; THEY VANISH. 516 an insolent curiosity ; a meddlesome temper ; a cold- blooded criticism, fomided on a shallow interpretation of lialf-jjerceptions ; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own ; a most irreverent propensity to thi'ust Providence aside, and substitute one's self in its awful place, — out of these, and other motives as miserable as these, comes your idea of duty ! But, beware, sir ! With all your fancied acuteness, you step blindfold into these affairs. For any mischief that may follow your interference, I hold you responsible ! " It was evident that, with but a little further provo- cation, the lioness woidd turn to bay ; if, indeed, such were not her attitude already. I bowed, and not very well knowing what else to do, was about to withdraw. But, glancing again towards Priscilla, who had re- treated into a corner, there fell upon my heart an in- tolerable burden of despondency, the purport of which I could not tell, but only felt it to bear reference to her. I approached and held out my hand ; a gesture, however, to which she made no response. It was al- ways one of her peculiarities that she seemed to shrink from even the most friendly touch, imless it were Ze- nobia's or Hollingsworth's. Zenobia, all this while, stood watching us, but with a careless expression, as if it mattered very little what might pass. " Priscilla," I inquired, lowering my voice, " when do you go back to Blithedale ? " " Whenever they please to take me," said she. " Did you come away of your own free will? " I asked. " I am blown about like a leaf," she replied. " I never have any free will.'' " Does Hollingsworth know that you are here ? " said I. 516 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. " He bade me come," answered Priscilla. She looked at me, I thought, with an air of sur- prise as if the idea were incomprehensiLle that she should have taken this step without his agency. " What a gripe this man has laid upon her whole being ! " muttered I, between my teeth. " Well, as Zenobia so kindly intimates, I have no more business here. I wash my hands of it all. On HoUingsworth's head be the consequences ! Priscilla," I added aloud, " I know not that ever we may meet again. Fare- weU ! " As I spoke the word, a carriage had rumbled along the street, and stopt before the house. The door-bell rang, and steps were immediately afterwards heard on the staircase. Zenobia had thrown a shawl over her dress. "Mr. Coverdale," said she, with cool courtesy, "you will perhaps excuse us. We have an engagement, and are going out." " Whither?" I demanded. " Is not that a little more than you are entitled to inquire?" said she, with a smile. " At all events, it does not suit me to tell you." The door of the drawing-room opened, and Wester- velt appeared. I observed that he was elaborately dressed, as if for some grand entertainment. My dis- like for this man was infinite. At that moment it amounted to nothing less than a creeping of the flesh, as when, feeling about in a dark place, one touches something cold and slimy, and questions what the se- cret hatefidness may be. And still I could not but acknowledge that, for personal beauty, for polish of manner, for all that externally befits a gentleman, there was hardly another like him. After bowing to THEY VANISH. 517 Zenobia, and graciously saluting Priscilla in her cor- ner, he recognized me by a slight but courteous incli- nation. " Come, Priscilla," said Zenobia ; " it is time. Mr„ Coverdale, good evening." As Priscilla moved slowly forward, I met her in the middle of the drawing-room. " Priscilla," said I, in the hearing of them all, " do you know whither you are going ? " " I do not know," she answered. " Is it wise to go, and is it your choice to go ? " I asked. " If not, I am your friend, and HoUings worth's friend. Tell me so, at once." " Possibly," observed "Westervelt, smiling, " Pris- cilla sees in me an older friend than either Mr. Cov- erdale or Mr. Hollingsworth. I shall willingly leave the matter at her option." While thus speaking, he made a gesture of kindly invitation, and Priscilla passed me, with the gliding movement of a sprite, and took his offered arm. He offered the other to Zenobia ; but she turned her proud and beautiful face upon him, with a look which — judging from what I caught of it in profile — would undoubtedly have smitten the man dead, had he pos- sessed any heart, or had this glance attained to it. It seemed to rebound, however, from his courteous vis- age, like an arrow from polished steel. They all three descended the stairs ; and when I likewise reached the street-door, the carriage was already rollmg away. XXI. AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. Thus excluded from everybody's confidence, and at- taining no further, by my most earnest study, than to an uncertain sense of something hidden from me, it would appear reasonable that I should have flung off all these alien perplexities. Obviously, my best course was to betake myself to new scenes. Hei"e I was only an intruder. Elsewhere there might be circumstances in which I could establish a personal interest, and peo- ple who would respond, with a portion of their sym- pathies, for so much as I should bestow of mine. Nevertheless, there occurred to me one other thing to be done. Remembering old Moodie, and his rela- tionship with Priscilla, I determined to seek an inter- view, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the knot of affairs was as inextricable on that side as I found it on all others. Being tolerably well acquainted ynth the old man's haunts, I went, the next day, to the sa- loon of a certain establishment about which he often lurked. It was a reputable place enough, affording good entertainment in the way of meat, drink, and fu migation ; and there, in my young and idle days and nights, when I was neither nice nor wise, I had often amused myself with watching the staid humors and sober jollities of the thirsty souls around me. At my first entrance, old Moodie was not there. The more patiently to await him, I lighted a cigar, AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 519 and establishing myself in a corner, took a quiet, and, by sympathy, a boozy kind of pleasure in the custom- ary life that was going forward. The saloon was fitted up with a good deal of taste. There were pic- tures on the walls, and among them an oil-painting of a beefsteak, with such an admirable show of juicy tenderness, that the beholder sighed to think it merely visionary, and incapable of ever being put upon a gridiron. Another work of high art was the lifelike representation of a noble sirloin ; another, the liind- quarters of a deer, retaining the hoofs and tawny fur ; another, the head and shoulders of a salmon ; and, still more exquisitely finished, a brace of canvas-back ducks, in which the mottled feathers were depicted with the accuracy of a daguerreotype. Some very hungry painter, I suppose, had wrought these subjects of still-life, heightening his imagination with his ap- petite, and earning, it is to be hoped, the privilege of a daily dinner off wliichever of his pictorial viands he lilted best. Then, there was a fine old cheese, in which you could almost discern the mites ; and some sardines, on a small plate, very riclily done, and look- ing as if oozy with the oil in which they had been smothered. All these tilings were so perfectly imi- tated, that you seemed to have the genuine article be- fore you, and yet with an indescribable ideal charm ; it took away the grossness from what was fleshiest and fattest, and thus helped the life of man, even in its earthliest relations, to appear rich and noble, as well as warm, cheerful, and substantial. There were pic- tures, too, of gallant revellers, — those of the old time, — Flemish, apparently, — with doublets and slashed sleeves, — drinking their wine out of fantas- tic long-stemmed glasses ; quaffing joyously, quaffing 520 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. forever, with inaudible laughter and song, whUe the Champagne bubbled immortally against their mus- taches or the purple tide of Burgundy ran inexhaus- tibly down their throats. But, in an obscure corner of the saloon, there was a little picture — excellently done, moreover — of a ragged, bloated New England toper, stretched out on a bench, in the heavy, apoplectic sleep of drunkenness. The death-in-life was too well portrayed. You smelt the fumy liquor that had brought on this s3aieope. Your only comfort lay in the forced reflection, that, real as he looked, the poor caitiff was but imaginary, — a bit of painted canvas, whom no delirium tremens, nor so much as a retributive headache, awaited, on the morrow. By tliis time, it being past eleven o'clock, the two barkeepers of the saloon were in pretty constant activ- ity. One of these yovmg men had a rare faculty in the concoction of gin-cocktails. It was a spectacle to behold, how, with a timiblcr in each hand, he tossed the contents from one to the other. Never conveying it awry, nor spilling the least drop, he compelled the frothy liquor, as it seemed to me, to spout forth from one glass and descend into the other, in a great para- bolic curve, as well defined and calculable as a planet's orbit. He had a good forehead, with a particularly large development just above the eyebrows ; fine in- tellectual gifts, no doubt, wliich he had educated to this profitable end ; being famous for nothing but gin- cocktails, and commanding a fair salary by his one accomplishment. These cocktails, and other artificial combinations of liquor (of which there were at least a score, though mostly, I suspect, fantastic in their dif- ferences), were much in favor with the younger class AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 521 of customers, who, at furthest, had only reached the second stage of potatory life. The staunch old soakers, on the other hand, — men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor by way of blood, — usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and- water, gin, or West India rum ; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particidar drink. Two or three appeared to have bot- tles of their own behind the counter; and, winking one red eye to the barkeeper, he forthwith produced these choicest and peculiar cordials, which it was a matter of great interest and favor, among theii- ac- quaintances, to obtain a sip of. Agreeably to the Yankee habit, under whatever cir- cumstances, the deportment of all these good fellows, old or young, was decorous and thorouglily correct. They grew only the more sober in their cups ; there was no confused babble nor boisterous laughter. They sucked in the joyous fire of the decanters and kept it smouldering in their inmost recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart which it warmed and com- forted. Their eyes twinkled a little, to be sure ; they hemmed vigorously after each glass, and laid a hand upon the pit of the stomach, as if the pleasant titilla- tion there was what constituted the tangible part of their enjoyment. In that spot, unquestionably, and not in the brain, was the acme of the whole affair. But the true purpose of their drinking — and one that will induce men to drink, or do something equivalent, as long as this weary world shall endure — was the re- newed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful sense of things present and to come, with which, for about a quarter of an hour, the dram permeated their systems. 522 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. And when such quarters of an hour can be obtained in some mode less baneful to the great sum of a man's life, — but, nevertheless, with a little spice of impro- priety, to give it a wild flavor, — we temperance peo- ple may ring out our bells for victory ! The prettiest object in the saloon was a tiny foun- tain, which threw up its feathery jet through the coun- ter, and sparkled down again into an oval basin, or lakelet, containing several gold-fishes. There was a bed of bright sand at the bottom, strewn with coral and rock-work ; and the fishes went gleaming about, now turning up the sheen of a golden side, and now vanishing into the shadows of the water, like the fan- ciful thoughts that coquet with a poet in his dream. Never before, I imagine, did a company of water- drinkers remain so entirely uncontaminated by the bad example around them ; nor could I help wonder- ing that it had not occurred to any freakish inebriate to empty a glass of liquor into their lakelet. What a delightful idea ! Who would not be a fish, if he could inhale jollity with the essential element of his exis- tence ! I had begun to despair of meeting old Moodie, when, all at once, I recognized his hand and arm pro- truding from behind a screen that was set up for the accomodation of bashful topers. As a matter of course, he had one of Priscilla's little purses, and was quietly insinuating it under the notice of a person who stood near. This was always old Moodie's way. You hardly ever saw him advancing towards you, but became aware of his proximity without being able to guess how he had come thither. He glided about like a spirit, assuming visibility close to your elbow, offering his petty trifles of merchandise, remaining long enough AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 523 for you to purchase, if so disposed, and then taking himself off, between two breaths, while you happened to be thinking of something else. By a sort of sympathetic impulse that often con- trolled me in those more impressible days of my life, I was induced to approach this old man in a mode as undemonstrative as his own. Thus, when, according to his custom, he was probably just about to vanish, he found me at his elbow. "Ah ! " said he, with more emphasis than was usual with him. " It is Mr. Coverdale ! " "Yes, Mr. Moodie, your old acquaintance," an- swered I. " It is some time now since we ate lunch- eon together at Blithedale, and a good deal longer since our little talk together at the street-corner." " That was a good while ago," said the old man. And he seemed inclined to say not a word more. His existence looked so colorless and torpid, — so very faintly shadowed on the canvas of reality, — that I was half afraid lest he should altogether disappear, even while my eyes were fixed full upon his figure. He was certainly the wretchedest old ghost in the world, with his crazy hat, the dingy handkerchief about his throat. Ills suit of threadbare gray, and especially that patch over his right eye, behind which he always seemed to be hiding himself. There was one method, however, of bringing him out into somewhat stronger relief. A glass of brandy would effect it. Perhaps the gentler influence of a bottle of claret might do the same. Nor could I think it a matter for the recording angel to write down against me, if — with my painful conscious- ness of the frost in this old man's blood, and the posi- tive ice that had congealed about his heart — I should thaw him out, were it only for an hoiu', mth the sum- 524 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. raer warmth of a little wine. What else could possibly be (lone for him ? How else could he be mibued with energy enough to hope for a happier state hereafter? How else be inspired to say his prayers ? For there are states of our spiritual system when the throb of the soul's life is too faint and weak to render us capa- ble of religious aspiration. " Mr. Moodie," said I, " shall we limch together ? And would you like to drink a glass of wine ? " His one eye gleamed. He bowed ; and it impressed me that he grew to be more of a man at once, either in anticipation of the wane, or as a grateful response to my good fellowship in offering it. " "With pleasure," he replied. The barkeeper, at my request, showed us into a pri- vate room, and soon afterwards set some fried oysters and a bottle of claret on the table ; and I saw the old man glance curiously at the label of the bottle, as if to learn the brand. " It shoidd be good wine," I remarked, " if It have any right to its label." "You cannot suppose, sir," said Moodie, with a sigh, " that a poor old fellow like me knows any dif- ference in wines." And yet, in his way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the g-ustatory skill with which he gave his palate the full advantage of it, it was im- possible not to recognize the connoisseur. " I fancy, Mr. Moodie," said I, " you are a mucli better judge of wines than I have yet learned to be. Tell me fairly, — did you never drink it where the grape grows ? " " How should that have been, Mr. Coverdale ? " an- AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 625 swered old Moodie, shyly ; but then he took courage, as it were, and uttered a feeble little laugh. " The flavor of this wine," added he, " and its perfume still more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man." " I wish, Mr. Moodie," suggested I, — not that I greatly cared about it, however, but was only anxious to draw him into some talk about Priscilla and Zeno- bia, — "I wish, while we sit over our wine, you would favor me with a few of those youthfid reminiscences." " Ah," said he, shaking his head, "they might in- terest you more than you suppose. But I had better be silent, Mr. Coverdale. If this good wine, — though claret, I suppose, is not apt to play such a trick, — but if it should make my tongue rim too freely, I coidd never look you in the face again." " You never did look me in the face, Mr. Moodie," I replied, " until this very moment." " Ah ! " sighed old Moodie. -~^t was wonderfid, however, what an effect the mild grape-juice wrought upon him. It was not in the wine, but in the associations which it seemed to bring up. Instead of the mean, slouching, furtive, painftdly de- pressed air of an old city vagabond, more like a gray kennel-rat than any other living thing, he began to take the aspect of a decayed gentleman. Even his garments — especially after I had myself quaffed a glass or two — looked less shabby than when we first sat down. There was, by and by, a certain exuberance and elaborateness of gesture and manner, oddly in contrast with all that I had hitherto seen of him. Anon, with hardly any impulse from me, old Moodie began to talk. His communications referred exclu- sively to a long-past and more fortimate period of his 526 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. life, with only a few unavoidable allusions to the cir- cumstances that had reduced hiui to his j^resent state. But, having once got the clew, my subsequent re- searches acquainted nie with the main facts of the fol- lowing narrative ; although, in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer. xxn. FAUNTLEROY. FiVE-AND-TWENTY years ago, at the epoch of this story, there dwelt in one of the Middle States a man whom we shall call Fauntleroy ; a man of wealth, and magnificent tastes, and prodigal expenditure. His home might almost be styled a palace : his habits, in the ordinary sense, princely. His whole being seemed to have crystallized itself into an external splendor, wherewith he glittered in the eyes of the world, and had no other life than upon this gaudy surface. He had married a lovely woman, whose nature was deeper than his own. But his affection for her, though it showed largely, was superficial, like all his other man- ifestations and developments ; he did not so truly keep this noble creature in his heart, as wear her beauty for the most brilliant ornament of his outward state. And there was born to him a child, a beautiful daugh- ter, whom he took from the beneficent hand of God with no just sense of her immortal value, but as a man already rich in gems would receive another jewel. If he loved her, it was because she shone. After Faimtleroy had thus spent a few empty years, coruscating continually an unnatural light, the source of it — which was merely his gold — began to grow more shallow, and finally became exhausted. He saw himself in imminent peril of losing all that had here- tofore distinguished him ; arid, conscious of no innate 628 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. worth to fall back upon, he recoiled from this calam- ity with the instinct of a soul shrinking from annihi- lation. To avoid it — wretched man ! — or, rather to defer it, if but for a month, a day, or only to procure himseK the life of a few breaths more amid the false glitter which was now less his own than ever, — he made himself g'uilty of a crime. It was just the sort of crime, growmg out of its artificial state which soci- ety (unless it should change its entire constitution for this man's unworthy sake) neither could nor ought to pardon. More safely might it pardon murder. Faunt- leroy's guilt was discovered. He fled ; his wife per- ished, by the necessity of her innate nobleness, in its alliance with a being so ignoble ; and betwixt her mother's death and her father's ignominy, his daugh- ter was left worse than orphaned. There was no pursuit after Faimtleroy. His family connections, who had great wealth, made such arrange- ments ^vith those whom he had attempted to wrong as secured him from the retribution that would have overtaken an unfriended criminal. The wreck of his estate was divided among his creditors. His name, in a very brief space, was forgotten by the multitude who had passed it so diligently from mouth to mouth. Seldom, indeed, was it recalled, even by his closest former intimates. Nor could it have been otherwise. The man had laid no real touch on any mortal's heart. Being a mere image, an optical delusion, created by the sunshine of prosperity, it was his law to vanish into the shadow of the first intervening cloud. He seemed to leave no vacancy ; a phenomenon which, like many others that attended his brief career, went far to prove the illusiveness of his existence. Not, however, that the physical substance of Faunt- FAUNTLEROY. 529 leroy had literally melted into vapor. He had fled northward to the New England metropolis, and had taken up his abode, under another name, in a squalid street or court of the older portion of the city. There he dwelt among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners, and forlorn good people, Irish, and whomsoever else were neediest. Many families were clustered in each house together, above stairs and below, in the little peaked garrets, and even in the dusky cellars. The house where Fauntleroy paid weekly rent for a cham- ber and a closet had been a stately habitation in its day. An old colonial governor had built it, and lived there, long ago, and held his levees in a great room where now slept twenty Irish bedfellows ; and died in Fauntleroy's chamber, which his embroidered and white-wigged ghost still haunted. Tattered hangings, a marble hearth, traversed with many cracks and fissures, a riclily carved oaken mantel - piece, partly hacked away for kindling-stuff, a stuccoed ceiling, de- faced with great, unsightly patches of the naked laths, — such was the chamber's aspect, as if, with its splin- ters and rags of dirty splendor, it were a kind of prac- tical gibe at this poor, ruined man of show. At first, and at irregular intervals, his relatives al- lowed Fauntleroy a little pittance to sustain life ; not from any love, perhaps, but lest poverty should compel him, by new offences, to add more shame to that with which he had already stained them. But he showed no tendency to further guilt. His character appeared to have been radically changed (as, indeed, from its shal- lowness, it well might) by his miserable fate ; or, it may be, the traits now seen in him were portions of the same character, presenting itseK in another phase. Instead of any longer seeking to live in the sight of VOL. V. 34 530 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. the world, his impulse was to shrink into the nearest obscurity, and to bo unseen of men, were it possible, even while standing before their eyes. He had no pride ; it was all trodden in the dust. No ostentation ; for how could it survive, when there was nothing left of Faimtleroy, save penvu-y and shame I His very gait demonstrated that he would gladly have faded out of view, and have crept about invisibly, for the sake of sheltering himself from the irksomeness of a human glance. Hardly, it was averred, within the memory of those who knew him now, had he the hardihood to show his full front to the world. He skidked in cor- ners, and crept about in a sort of noonday twilight, making himself gray and misty, at all hours, with his morbid intolerance of simshine. In his torpid despair, however, he had done an act which that condition of the spirit seems to prompt almost as often as prosperity and hope. Fauntleroy was again married. He had taken to wife a forlorn, meek-spirited, feeble young woman, a seamstress, whom he found dwelling vdth her mother in a contiguous chamber of the old gubernatorial residence. This poor phantom — as the beautif id and noble compan- ion of his former life had done — brought him a daughter. And sometimes, as from one dream into another, Fauntleroy looked forth out of his present grimy environment into tliat past magnificence, and wondered whether the gi-andee of yesterday or the pau- l)er of to-day were real. But, in my mind, the one and the other were alike impalpable. In ti-uth, it was Fauntleroy's fatality to behold whatever he touched dissolve. After a few years, his second wife (dim shadow that she had always been) faded finally out of the world, and left Fauntleroy to deal as he might FAUNTLEROY. 531 with their j^ale and nervous child. And, by this time, among his distant relatives, — with whom he had grown a weary thought, linked with contagious in- famy, and wliich they were only too willing to get rid of, — he was himself supposed to be no more. The younger child, like his elder one, might be con- sidered as the true offsj)ring of both parents, and as the reflection of their state. She was a tremulous lit- tle creature, shrinking involimtarily from all mankind, but m timidity, and no sour repugnance. There was a lack of human substance in her ; it seemed as if, were she to stand up in a sunbeam, it would pass right through her figure, and trace out the cracked and dusty window-panes upon the naked floor. But, nev- ertheless, the poor child had a heart ; and from her mother's gentle character she had inherited a profoimd and still capacity of affection. And so her life was one of love. She bestowed it partly on her father, but in greater part on an idea. For Faun tie roy, as they sat by their cheerless fire- side, — which was no fireside, in truth, but only a rusty stove, — had often tallied to the little girl about his former wealth, the noble loveliness of his first wife, and the beautifid child whom she had given him. In- stead of the fairy tales which other parents tell, he told Priscilla this. And, out of the loneliness of her sad little existence, Priscilla's love grew, and tended upward, and twined itself perseveringly around this imseen sister ; as a grape-vine might strive to clamber out of a gloomy hollow among the rocks, and embrace a young tree standing in the sunny warmth above. It was almost like worship, both in its earnestness and its humility ; nor was it the less hinnble, — though the more earnest, — because Priscilla could claim hu- 532 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. man kindred with tlie being- wlioni she so devoutly loved. As with worship, too, it gave her soul the re- freshment of a purer atmosphere. Save for tliis singu- lar, this melancholy, and yet beautiful affection, the child could hardly have lived ; or, had she lived, with a heart shriuiken for lack of any sentiment to fill it, she must have yielded to the barren miseries of her position, and have grown to womanhood characterless and worthless. But now, amid all the sombre coarse- ness of her father's outward life, and of her own, Pris- cilla had a liigher and imaginative life within. Some faint gleam thereof was often visible upon her face. It was as if, in her spiritual visits to her brilliant sister, a portion of the latter's brightness had perme- ated oiu" dim Priscilla, and still lingered, shedding a faint illumination through the cheerless chamber, after she came back. As the child grew up, so pallid and so slender, and with much unaccountable nervousness, and all the weaknesses of neglected infancy still haimting her, the gross and simple neighbors whispered strange things about Priscilla. The big, red, Irish matrons, whose innumerable progeny swarmed out of the adjacent doors, used to mock at the pale Western child. They fancied — or, at least, affirmed it, between jest and earnest — that she was not so solid flesh and blood as other children, but mixed largely with a thinner ele- ment. Tliey called her ghost-child, and said that she could indeed vanish when she pleased, but could never, in her densest moments, make herself quite visible. The sun, at midday, woidd shine through her ; in the first gi'ay of the twilight, she lost all the distinctness of her outline ; and, if you followed the dim thing into a dark corner, behold ! she was not there. And it was FAUNTLEROY. 533 true that Priscilla had strange ways ; strange ways, and stranger words, when she uttered any words at all. Never stirring out of the old governor's dusky house, she sometimes talked of distant places and splendid rooms, as if she had just left them. Hidden things were visible to her (at least so the people inferred from obscure hints escaping unawares out of her mouth), and silence was audible. And in all the world there was nothing so difficult to be endured, by those who had any dark secret to conceal, as the glance of Pris- cilla's timid and melancholy eyes. Her peculiarities were the theme of continual gossip among the other inhabitants of the gubernatorial man- sion. The rumor spread thence into a wider circle. Those who knew old Moodie, as he was now called, used often to jeer him, at the very street-corners, about his daughter's gift of second-sight and prophecy. It was a period when science (though mostly through its empiracle professors) was bringing forward, anew, a hoard of facts and imperfect theories, that had par- tially won credence in elder times, but which modern scepticism had swept away as rubbish. These things were now tossed up again, out of the surging ocean of human thought and experience. The story of Priscil- la's preternatural manifestations, therefore, attracted a kind of notice of which it would have been deemed wholly unworthy a few years earlier. One day a gentleman ascended the creaking staircase, and in- quired which was old Moodie' s chamber-door. And, several times, he came again. He was a marvellously handsome man, — still youthful, too, and fashionably dressed. Except that Priscilla, in those days, had no beauty, and, in the languor of her existence, had not yet blossomed into womanhood, there woidd have been 534 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. rich food for scandal in these visits ; for the girl was unquestionably their sole object, although her father was supposed always to be present. But, it must like- wise be added, there was something about Priscilla that calumny could not meddle ^ith ; and thus far was she privileged, either by the preponderance of what was spiritual, or the thin and watery blood that left her cheek so pallid. Yet, if the busy tongues of the neighborhood spared Priscilla in one way, they made themselves amends by renewed and wilder babble on another score. They averred that the strange gentleman was a wizard, and that he had taken advantage of Priscilla' s lack of earthly substance to subject her to himself, as his familiar spirit, through whose medium he gained cog- nizance of whatever happened, in regions near or re- mote. The boundaries of his power were defined by the verge of the pit of Tartarus on the one hand, and the third sphere of the celestial world on the other. Again, they declared their suspicion that the wizard, with all his show of manly beauty, was really an aged and wizened figure, or else that his semblance of a hu- man body was only a necromantic, or j^erhaps a me- chanical contrivance, in which a demon walked about. In proof of it, however, they could merely instance a gold band around his upper teeth, wdiicli had once been visible to several old women, when he smiled at them from the top of the governor's staircase. Of course, this was all absurdity, or mostly so. But, after every possible deduction, there remained certain very myste- rious points about the stranger's character, as well as the connection that he established with Priscilla. Its nature at that period was even less understood than now, when miracles of this kind have grown so abso- FAUNTLEROY. 535 lutely stale, that I would gladly, if the truth allowed, dismiss the whole matter from my narrative. We must now glance backward, in quest of the beautifid daughter of Fauntleroy's prosperity. What had become of her ? Fauntleroy's only brother, a bachelor, and with no other relative so near, had adopted the forsaken child. She grew up in affluence, with native graces clustering luxuriantly about her. In her triumphant progress towards womanhood, she was adorned with every variety of feminine accom- plishment. But she lacked a mother's care. With no adequate control, on any hand (for a man, however stern, however wise, can never sway and guide a fe- male child), her character was left to shape itself. There was good in it, and evil. Passionate, self-willed, and imperious, she had a warm and generous nature ; showing the richness of the soil, however, chiefly- by the weeds that flourished in it, and choked up the herbs of grace. In her girlhood her uncle died. As Fauntleroy was supposed to be likewise dead, and no other heir was known to exist, his wealth devolved on her, although, dying suddenly, the uncle left no will. After his death, there were obscure passages in Zeno- bia's history. There were whispers of an attachment, and even a secret marriage, with a fascinating and accomplished but unprincipled young man. The in- cidents and appearances, however, which led to this surmise, soon passed away, and were forgotten. Nor was her reputation seriously affected by the re- port. In fact, so great was her native power and influence, and such seemed the careless piuuty of her nature, that whatever Zenobia did was generally ac- knowledged as right for her to do. The world never criticised her so harshly as it does most women who 636 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. transcend its rules. It almost yielded its assent, when it beheld hei* stepjiing out of the conunon path, and asserting the more extensive privileges of her sex, both theoretically and by her practice. The sphere of or- dinai-y womanhood was felt to be narrower than her development reqmred. A portion of Zenobia's more recent life is told in the foregoing pages. Partly in earnest, — and, I im- agine, as was her disposition, half in a proud jest, or in a kind of recklessness that had grown upon her, out of some hidden grief, — she had given her coun- tenance, and promised liberal pecimiary aid, to our experiment of a better social state. And Priscilla followed her to Blithedale. The sole bliss of her life had been a dream of this beautiful sister, who had never so much as known of her existence. By this time, too, the poor girl was inthralled in an intolera- ble bondage, from which she must either free herself or perish. She deemed herself safest near Zenobia, into whose large heart she hoped to nestle. One evening, months after Priscilla's departure, when Moodie (or shall we call him Fauntleroy ?) was sitting alone in the state-chamber of the old govern- or, there came footsteps up the staircase. There was a pause on the landing-place. A lady's musical yet haughty accents were heard making an inquiry from some denizen of the house, who had thrust a head out of a contiguous chamber. There was then a knock at Moodie's door. " Come in ! " said he. ~~^ And Zenobia entered. The details of the interview that followed being unknown to me — while, notwith- standing, it would be a pity quite to lose the pictur- esqueness of the situation, — I shall attempt to sketch FAUNTLEROY. 537 it, mainly from fancy, although with some general gTounds of surmise in regard to the old man's feel- ings. She gazed wonderingly at the dismal chamber. Dismal to her, who beheld it only for an instant ; and how much more so to him, into whose brain each bare spot on the ceiling, every tatter of the paper-hangings, and all the splintered carvings of the mantel - piece, seen wearily through long years, had worn their sev- eral prints ! Inexpressibly miserable is this famil- iarity with objects that have been from the first dis- gustful. " I have received a strange message," said Zenobia, after a moment's silence, " requesting, or rather en- joining it upon me, to come hither. Rather from cu- riosity than any other motive, — and because, though a woman, I have not all the timidity of one, — I have complied. Can it be you, sir, who thus summoned me ? " " It was," answered Moodie. " And what was your purpose ? " she continued. " You require charity, perhaps ? In that case, the message might have been more fitly worded. But you are old and poor, and age and poverty should be al- lowed their privileges. Tell me, therefore, to what extent you need my aid." " Put up your purse," said the supposed mendicant, with an inexi3licable smile. "Keep it, — keep all your wealth, — until I demand it all, or none ! My mes- sage had no such end in view. You are beautiful, they tell me ; and I desired to look at you." He took the one lamp that showed the discomfort and sordidness of his abode, and approaching Zenobia held it up, so as to gain the more perfect view of her. 538 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. from top to toe. So obscure was the chamlier, that you could see the reflection of her diamonds tlu-own ujDon the dingy wall, and flickering with the rise and fall of Zenobia's breath. It was the splendor of those jewels on her neck, like lamps that burn before some fair temple, and the jewelled flower in her hair, more than the murky, yellow light, that helped him to see her beauty. But he beheld it, and grew proud at heart ; his own figure, in spite of his mean habili- ments, assumed an air of state and grandeur. "It is well," cried old Moodie. "Keep your wealth. You are right worthy of it. Keep it, therefore, but with one condition only." Zenobia thought the old man beside himself, and was moved with pity. " Have you none to care for you? " asked she. "No daughter ? — no kind-hearted neighbor ? — no means of procuring the attendance which you need? Tell me once again, can I do nothing for you ? " " Nothing," he replied. " I have beheld what I wished. Now leave me. Linger not a moment longer, or I may be tempted to say what would bring a cloud over that queenly brow. Keep all yovu- wealth, but with only this one condition : Be kind — be no less kind than sisters are — to my poor Priscilla ! " And, it may be, after Zenobia withdrew, Faimtleroy paced his gloomy chamber, and communed with him- self as follows, — or, at all events, it is the only solu- tion which I can offer of the enigma presented in his character : — " I am unchanged, — the same man as of yore ! " said he. " True, my brother's wealth — he dying in- testate — is legally my own. I know it ; yet of my own choice, I live a beggar, and go meanly clad, and FAUNTLEROY. 539 hide myself behind a forgotten ignominy. Looks this like ostentation ? Ah ! but in Zenobia I live again ! Beholding her, so beautiful, — so fit to be adorned with all imaginable splendor of outward state, — the cursed vanity, which, half a lifetime since, dropt off like tatters of once gaudy apparel from my debased and ruined person, is all renewed for her sake. Were I to reappear, my shame woidd go with me from dark- ness into daylight. Zenobia has the splendor, and not the shame. Let the world admire her, and be dazzled by her, the brilliant child of my prosperity ! It is Fauntleroy that still sliines through her ! " But then, perhaps, another thought occurred to him. " My poor Priscilla ! And am I just to her, in sur- rendering- all to this beautiful Zenobia ? Priscilla ! I love her best, — I love her only ! — but with shame, not pride. So dim, so pallid, so shrinking, — the daughter of my long calamity ! Wealth were but a mockery in Priscilla's hands. What is its use, except to fling a golden radiance around those who grasp it ? Yet let Zenobia take heed ! Priscilla shall have no wrong ! " But, while the man of show thus meditated, — that very evening, so far as I can adjust the dates of these strange incidents, — Priscilla — poor, pallid flower ! — was either snatched from Zenobia's hand, or flung wilfully away ! XXIII. A VILLAGE HALL. [,Well, I betook myself away, and wandered up and down, like an exorcised spirit that had been driven from its old hamits after a mighty struggle^ It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond^most other things, to find the impracticability oi flinging aside affections that have grown irksome. The bands that were silken once are apt to become iron fetters when we desire to shake them off. 1 Our souls, after all, are not our owii. We convey a property in them to those with whom we associate ; but to what extent can never be known, until we feel the tug, the agony, of our abortive effort to resume an exclusive sway over our- selves. Thus, in all the weeks of my absence, my thoughts continually reverted back, brooding over the bygone months, and bringing up incidents that seemed hardly to have, left a trace of themselves in their pas- sage. } I spent painfid hoTirs in recalling these trifles, and rendering them more misty and unsubstantial than at first by the quantity of specidative musing thus kneaded in with thein^ HoUingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla! These three had absorbed my life into themselves. Together ,with an inexpressible longing to know their fortimes, Jbliere was likewise a morbid resentment of my own pain, and a stubborn reluc- tance to come again within their sphereT] AH that I learned of them, therefore, was comprised A VILLAGE HALL. 541 in a few brief and pnngent squibs, such as the news- papers were then in the habit of bestowing on our so- cialist enterprise. There was one paragraph, which if I rightly guessed its purport, bore reference to Zeno- bia, but was too darkly hinted to convey even thus much of certainty. Hollingsworth, too, with his phil- anthropic project, afforded the penny-a-liners a theme for some savage and bloody-minded jokes ; and, con- siderably to my surprise, they affected me with as much indignation as if we had still been friends. Thus i^assed several weeks; time long enough for my brown and toil -hardened hands to reaccustom themselves to gloves. Old habits, such as were merely external, returned upon me with wonderfvd prompti- tude. My superficial talk, too, assumed altogether a worldly tone. Meeting former acquaintances, who showed themselves inclined to ridicide my heroic de- votion to the cause of human welfare, I spoke of the recent phase of my life as indeed fair matter for a jest. But, I also gave them to understand that it was, at most, only an experiment, on which I had staked no valuable amount of hope or fear. It had enabled me to pass the summer in a novel and agree- able way, had afforded me some grotesque specimens of artificial simplicity, and could not, therefore, so far as I was concerned, be reckoned a failure. In no one instance, however, did I voluntarily speak of my three friends. They dwelt in a profounder region. The more I consider myself as I then was, the more do I recognize how deeply my connection with those three had affected all my being. As it was already the epoch of annihilated space, I might in the time I was away from Blithedale have snatched a glimpse at England, and been back again- 542 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. But my \vaiicleiin<;-.s were confined within a very lim- iteil sphere. ' I hopped and fluttered, like a bird with a string about its leg, gyrating round a small circum- ference, and keeping up a restless activity to no pur- pose. Thus it was still in our familiar Massachusetts — in one of its white country-villages — that I must next particularize an incident. The scene was one of those lyceum-halls, of which almost every village has now its own, dedicated to that sober and pallid, or rather drab-colored, mode of win- ter-evening entertainment, the lecture. Of late years, this has come strangely into vogue, when the natural tendency of things would seem to be co substitute let- tered for oral methods of addressing the public. But, in halls like this, besides the winter course of lectures, there is a rich and varied series of other exhibitions. Hither comes the ventriloquist, with all his mysterious tongues ; the thaumaturgist, too, with his miraculous transformations of plates, doves, and rings, his pan- cakes smoking in your hat, and his cellar of choice liquors represented in one small bottle. Here, also, the itinerant professor instructs separate classes of la- dies and gentlemen in physiology, and demonstrates his lessons by the aid of real skeletons, and manikins in wax, from Paris. Here is to be heard the choir of Ethiopian melodists, and to be seen the diorama of Moscow or Bunker Hill, or the moving panorama of the Chinese wall. Here is displayed the museum of wax figures, illustrating the wide Catholicism of earthly renown, by mixing up heroes and statesmen, the pope and the Mormon prophet, kings, queens, murderers, and beautiful ladies; every sort of person, in short, except authors, of whom I never beheld even the most famous done in wax. And here, in this many-puiv A VILLAGE HALL. 543 posed hall (unless the selectmen of the village chance to have more than their share of the Puritanism, which, however diversified with later patchwork, still gives its prevailing tint to New England character), here the company of strolling players sets up its little stage, and claims patronage for the legitunate drama. But, on the autiunnal evening which I speak of, a number of printed handbills — stuck up in the bar- room, and on the sign-post of the hotel, and on the meeting-house porch, and distributed largely through the village — had promised the inhabitants an inter- view with that celebrated and hitherto inexplicable phenomenon, the Veiled Lady ! The hall was fitted up with an amphitheatrical de- scent of seats towards a platform, on which stood a desk, two lights, a stool, and a capacious antique chair. The audience was of a generally decent and respec- table character : old farmers, in their Sunday black coats, with shrewd, hard, sun-dried faces, and a cynical humor, oftener than any other expression, in their eyes ; pretty girls, in many - colored attire ; pretty young men, — the schoohnaster, the lawyer, or student at law, the shop-keeper, — all looking rather suburban than rural. In these days, there is absolutely no rus- ticity, except when the actual labor of the soil leaves its earth -moidd on the person. There was likewise a considerable proportion of young and middle-aged women, many of them stern in feature, with marked foreheads, and a very definite line of eyebrow ; a type of womanhood in which a bold intellectual develop- ment seems to be keeping pace with the progressive delicacy of the physical constitution. Of all these people I took note, at first, according to my custom. But I ceased to do so the moment that my eyes fell 544 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. oil :iii indivitlual who sat two or throe seats below me, iiiuiiovable, apparently deep in thought, with his back, of course, towards me, and his face turned steadfastly upon the platform. After sitting awhile in contemplation of this per- son's familiar contour, I was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whisper : — " Hollingsworth ! where have you left Zenobia?" His nerves, however, were proof against my attack. He turned half around, and looked me in the face with great, sad eyes, in which there was neither kind- ness nor resentment, nor any perceptible surprise. " Zenobia, when I last saw her," he answered, " was at Blithedale." He said no more. But there was a great deal of talk going on near me, among a knot of people who might be considered as representing the mysticism, or rather the mystic sensuality, of this singular age. The nature of the exliibition that was about to take place had probably given the turn to their conversation. I heard, from a j)ale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories than ever were written in a romance ; told, too, with a simple, unimaginative steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in compelling the audi- tor to receive them into the category of established facts. He cited instances of the miraculous power of one human being over the will and passions of an- other ; insomuch that settled grief was but a shadow beneath the influence of a man possessing this potency, and the strong love of years melted away like a vapor. At the bidding of one of these wizards, the maiden, with her lover's kiss still burning on her lips, would A VILLAGE HALL. 545 turn from him with icy indifference ; the newly made widow would dig up her buried heart out of her young husband's grave before the sods had taken root upon it ; a mother with her babe's milk in her bosom, would thrust away her child. Human character was but soft wax in his hands ; and guilt, or virtue, only the forma into which he should see fit to mould it. The relig:- ious sentiment was a flame which he could blow up with his breath, or a spark that he could utterly ex- tinguish. It is unutterable, the horror and disgust with which I listened, and saw that, if these things were to be believed, the individual sovd was virtually annihilated, and all that is sweet and pure in our present life debased, and that the idea of man's eter- nal responsibility was made ridiculous, and immortal- ity rendered at once impossible, and not worth accept- ance. But I would have perished on the spot sooner than believe it. The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that have followed in their train, — such as tables upset by invisible agencies, bells seK-tolled at funer- als, and ghostly music performed on jewsharps, — had not yet arrived. Alas, my countrymen, methinks we have fallen on an evil age ! If these phenomena have not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point than it has ever before reached wliile incarnate ? We are pursuing a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, has degraded below hiunanity ! To hold inter- course with spirits of this order, we must stooj) and grovel in some element more vile than earthly dust. VOL. V. 35 546 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. These goblins, i£ they exist at all, ave but the shad- ows of past mortality, outcasts, mere refuse-stuff, ad- judged unworthy of the eternal world, and, on the most favorable supposition, d^vindling gradually into nothingness. The less we have to say to them the better, lest we share their fate ! The audience now began to be impatient ; they sitrnified their desire for the entertainment to com- mence by thmnp of sticks and stamp of boot-heels. Nor was it a great while longer before, in response to their call, there appeared a bearded personage in Ori- ental robes, looking like one of the enchanters of the Arabian Nights. He came upon the platform from a side door, saluted the spectators, not with a salaam, but a bow, took his station at the desk, and first blow- ing his nose with a white handkerchief, prepared to speak. The en\dronment of the homely tillage hall, and the absence of many ingenious contrivances of stage-effect with which the exhibition had heretofore been set off, seemed to bring the artifice of this char- acter more oiDenly upon the surface. No sooner did I behold the bearded enchanter, than, laying my hand again on HoUingsworth's shoulder, I whisjoered in his ear, — " Do you know him ? " " I never saw the man before," he muttered, without turning his head. But I liad seen him three times already. Once, on occasion of my first visit to the Veiled Lady ; a sec- ond time, in the wood-path at Blithedale ; and lastly, in Zenobia's drawing-room. It was Westervelt. A quick association of ideas made me shudder from head to foot ; and again, like an evil spirit, bringing up reminiscences of a man's sins, I whispered a question in HoUingsworth's ear, — A VILLAGE HALL. 547 " What have you done with Priseilla ? " He gave a convulsive start, as if I had thrust a knife into him, wiithed himself round on his seat, glared fiercely into mj eyes, but answered not a word. The Professor began liis discoiu^se, explanatory of the psychological phenomena, as he termed them, which it was his purpose to exhibit to the spectators. There remains no very distinct impression of it on my mem- ory. It was eloquent, ingenious, plausible, with a de- lusive show of spirituality, yet really imbued through- out with a cold and dead materialism. I shivered, as at a current of chill air issuing out of a sepulchral vault, and bringing the smell of corruption along with it. He spoke of a new era that was da'svoiing upon the world ; an era that woidd link soul to soul, and the present life to what we call futurity, with a closeness that should finally convert both worlds into one great, mutually conscious brotherhood. He described (in a strange, philosophical giiise, with terms of art, as if it were a matter of chemical discovery) the agency by which this mighty result was to be effected ; nor would it have surprised me, had he pretended to hold up a portion of his universally pervasive fluid, as he af- firmed it to be, in a glass phial. At the close of his exordium, the Professor beck- oned with his hand, — once, twice, thrice, — and a figure came gliding upon the platform, enveloped in a long veil of silvery whiteness. It feU about her like the texture of a summer cloud, with a kind of vague- ness, so that the outline of the form beneath it could not be accurately discerned. But the movement of the Veiled Lady was gTaceful, free, and imembar- rassed, like that of a person accustomed to be the spectacle of thousands ; or, possibly, a blindfold pris- 548 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. oner within the sphere with which this dark earthly magician had surrounded her, she was wliolly uncon- scious of being the central object to all those sti-ainiug eyes. Pliant to his gesture (wliich had even an obsequi- ous courtesy, but at the same time a remarkable de- cisiveness), the figure placed itself in the gi-eat chair. Sitting there, in such visible obscurity, it was, per- haps, as much like the actual presence of a disembod- ied spirit as anything that stage trickery could devise. The hushed breathing of the spectators proved how high-wi'ought were their anticipations of the wonders to be performed through the medium of this incom- prehensible creatm-e. I, too, was in breathless sus- pense, but with a far different presentiment of some strange event at hand. " You see before you the Veiled Lady," said the bearded Professor, advancing to the verge of the plat- form. " By the agency of wliich I have just spoken, she is at tliis moment in commimion ^vith the spiritual world. That sUvery veil is, in one sense, an enchant- ment, having been dipped, as it were, and essentially imbued, tlu'ough the potency of my art, with the fluid medium of spirits. Slight and ethereal as it seems, the limitations of time and space have no existence within its folds. This hall — these hmidreds of faces, encompassing her within so narrow an amphitheatre — are of thinner substance, in her view, than the airiest vapor that the clouds are made of. She be- holds the Absolute ! " As preliminary to other and far more wonderful psychological experiments, the exhibitor suggested that some of his auditors should endeavor to make the Veiled Lady sensible of their presence by such methods A VILLAGE HALL. 549 — provided only no tonch were laid upon her person — as they might deem best adapted to that end. Ac- cordingly, several deep -lunged country-fellows, who looked as if they might have blowTi the apparition away with a breath, ascended the platform. Mutu- ally encoui'aging one another, they shouted so close to her ear that the veil stirred like a wreath of vanishins: mist ; they smote upon the floor with bludgeons ; they perpetrated so hideous a clamor, that methought it might have reached, at least, a little way into the eter- nal sphere. Finally, with the assent of the Professor, they laid hold of the great chair, and were startled, apparently, to find it soar upward, as if lighter than the air through which it rose. But the Veiled Lady remained seated and motionless, with a composure that was hardly less than awful, because implying so immeasurable a distance betwixt her and these rude persecutors. " These efforts are wholly without avail," observed the Professor, who had been looking on with an as- pect of serene indifference. " The roar of a battery of cannon would be inaudible to the Veiled Lady. And yet, were I to will it, sitting in this very hall, she could hear the desert wind sweeping over the sands as far off as Arabia ; the icebergs grinding one against the other in the polar seas ; the rustle of a leaf in an East-Indian forest ; the lowest whispered breath of the bashfullest maiden in the world, uttering the first confession of her love. Nor does there exist the moral inducement, apart from my own behest, that could persuade her to lift the silvery veil, or arise out of that chair." Greatly to the Professor's discomposure, however, just as he spoke these words, the Veiled Lady arose. 550 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. There was a mysterious tremor that shook the magic veil. The spectators, it may be, imagined tliat she was about to take flight into that invisible sphere, and to the society of those purely spiritual beings with whom they reckoned her so near akin. IloUings- worth, a moment ago, had mounted the platform, and now stood gazing at the figure, with a sad intentness that brought the wdiole power of his great, stern, yet tender soul into his glance. "Come," said he, waving his hand towards her. " You are safe ! " She threw off the veil, and stood before that multi- tude of people pale, tremulous, shrinking, as if only then had she discovered that a thousand eyes were gazing at her. Poor maiden ! How strangely had she been betrayed ! Blazoned abroad as a wonder of the world, and performing what were adjudged as miracles, — in the faith of many, a seeress and a prophetess ; in the harsher judgment of others, a mountebank, — she had kept, as I religiously believe, her virgin reserve and sanctity of soul throughout it all. Within that encircling veil, though an evil hand had flung it over her, there was as deep a seclusion as if this forsaken girl had, all the while, been sitting under the shadow of Eliot's pidpit, in the Blithedale woods, at the feet of him who now summoned her to the shelter of his arms. And the true heart-throb of a woman's affection was too powerful for the jugglery that liad hitherto environed her. She uttered a shriek, and fled to Hollingsv/'orth, like one escaping from her deadliest enemy, and was safe forever. XXIV. THE MASQUERADERS. Two nights had passed since the foregoing occur- rences, when, in a breezy September forenoon, I set forth from town, on foot, towards Blithedale. It was the most delightful of all days for a walk, with a dash of invigorating ice-temper in the air, but a coolness that soon gave place to the brisk glow of exercise, while the vigor remained as elastic as before. The atmosphere had a spirit and sparkle in it. Each breath was lil^e a sip of ethereal wine, tempered, as I said, with a crystal lump of ice. I had started on this expedition in an exceedingly sombre mood, as well be- fitted one who found himself tending towards home, but was conscious that nobody would be quite over- joyed to greet him there. My feet were hardly off the pavement, however, when this morbid sensation began to yield to the lively influences of air and mo- tion. Nor had I gone far, with fields yet green on ei- ther side, before my step became as swift and light as if Hollingsworth were waiting to exchange a friendly hand -grip, and Zenobia's and Priscilla's open arms woidd welcome the wanderer's reappearance. It has happened to me on other occasions, as well as this, to prove how a state of physical well-being can create a kind of joy, in spite of the profoundest anxiety of mind. The pathway of that walk still runs along, with 552 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. siinny freshness, through my memory. I know not why it should be so. But my mental eye can even now discern the September grass, bordering the pleas- ant roadside with a brighter verdure than while the summer heats were scorching it ; the trees, too, mostly green, although here and there a branch or shrub has donned its vesture of crimson and gold a week or two before its fellows. I see the tufted barberry-bushes, with their small clusters of scarlet fruit ; the toad- stools, likewise, — some spotlessly white, others yellow or red, — mysterious growths, springing suddenly from no root or seed, and growing nobody can tell how or wherefore. In this respect they resembled many of the emotions in my breast. And I still see the little rivulets, chill, clear, and bright, that murmured be- neath the road, through subterranean rocks, and deep- ened into mossy pools, where tiny fish were darting to and fro, and within which lurked the hermit-frog. But no, — I never can account for it, that, with a yearning interest to learn the upshot of all my story, and returning to Blithedale for that sole purpose, I should examine these things so like a peaceful-bosomed naturalist. Nor why, amid all my sjonpathies and fears, there shot, at times, a wild exhilaration through my frame. Thus I pursued my way along the line of the ancient stone wall that Paul Dudley built, and through white villages, and past orchards of ruddy apples, and fields of ripening maize, and patches of woodland, and all such sweet rural scenery as looks the fairest, a little beyond the suburbs of a town. Hollingsworth, Zeno- bia, Priscilla ! They glided mistily before me, as I walked. Sometimes, in my solitude, I laughed with the bitterness of self-scom, remembering how unreser- THE MASQUERADERS. 653 vedly I had given up my heart and soul to interests that were not mine. What had I ever had to do with them ? And why, being now free, shoidd I take this thraldom on me once again ? It was both sad and dangerous, I whispered to myself, to be in too close affinity with the passions, the errors, and the misfor- tunes of individuals who stood within a circle of their own, into which, if I stept at all, it must be as an in- ti'uder, and at a peril that I could not estimate. Drawing nearer to Blithedale, a sickness of the spirits kept alternating with my flights of causeless buoyancy. I indulged in a hundred odd and extrav- agant conjectures. Either there was no such place as Blithedale, nor ever had been, nor any brotherhood of thoughtful laborers, like what I seemed to recollect there, or else it was all changed during my absence. It had been nothing but flream-work and enchantment. I should seek in vain for the old farm-house, and for the greensward, the potato-fields, the root-crops, and acres of Indian corn, and for all that configuration of the land which I had imagined. It would be another spot, and an utter strangeness. These vagaries were of the spectral throng so apt to steal out of an unquiet heart. They partly ceased to haunt me, on my arriving at a point whence, through the trees, I began to catch glimpses of the Blithedale farm. That surely was something real. There was hardly a square foot of all those acres on which I had not trodden heavily, in one or another kind of toil. The curse of Adam's posterity — and, curse or bless- ing be it, it gives substance to the life aroimd us — had fii'st come upon me there. In the sweat of my brow I had there earned bread and eaten it, and so established my claim to be on earth, and my fellowship 554 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. with all the sons of labor. I could have knelt cIowti, and have laid my breast against that soil. The red clay of which my frame was moulded seemed nearer akin to those crumbling- furrows than to any other portion of the world's dust. There was my home, and there might be my grave. I felt an invincible reluctance, nevertheless, at the idea of presenting myself before my old associates, without first ascertaining the state in which they were. A nameless foreboding weighed upon me. Perhaps, shoidd I know all the circmustances that had occur- red, I might find it my wisest course to turn back, un- recognized, unseen, and never look at Blithedale more. Had it been evening, I would have stolen softly to some lighted window of the old farm-house, and peeped darkling in, to see all their well-kno^\^l faces round the supper-board. Then, were there a vacant seat, I might noiselessly unclose the door, glide in, and take my place among them, without a word. My entrance might be so quiet, my aspect so familiar, that they would forget how long I had been away, and suffer me to melt into the scene, as a wTcath of vapor melts into a larger cloud. I dreaded a boisterous greeting. Beholding me at table, Zenobia, as a matter of course, would send me a cup of tea, and Hollingsworth fill my plate from the great dish of pandowdy, and PriscLlla, in her quiet way, would hand the cream, and others help me to the bread and butter. Being one of them again, the knowledge of what had happened would come to me without a shock. For still, at every turn of my shifting fantasies, the thought stared me in the face that some evil thing had befallen us, or was ready to befall. Yielding to this ominous impression, I now turned THE MASQUERADERS. 555 aside into the woods, resohdng to spy out the posture of the Commimity, as craftily as the wild Indian be- fore he makes his onset. I would go wandering about the outskirts of the farm, and, perhaps, catching sight of a solitary acquaintance, would approach him amid the brown shadows of the trees (a kind of medium fit for spirits departed and re visitant, like myself), and entreat him to tell me how all things were. The first living creature that I met was a partridge which sprung up beneath my feet, and whirred away; the next was a squirrel, who chattered angi-ily at me from an overhanging bough. I trod along by the dark, sluggish river, and remember pausing on the bank, above one of its blackest and most placid pools (the very spot, with the barkless stump of a tree aslantwise over the water, is depicting itself to my fancy at this instant), and wondering how deep it was, and if any over-laden soul had ever flung its weight of mortalit}^ in thither, and if it thus escaped the burden, or only made it heavier. And perhaps the skeleton of the drowned wretch still lay beneath the inscrutable depth, clinging to some sunken log at the bottom with the gripe of its old despair. So slight, however, was the track of these gloomy ideas, that I soon forgot them in the contemplation of a brood of "wild ducks, which wei'e floating on the river, and anon took flight, leaving each a bright streak over the black surface. By and by, I came to my hermitage, in the heart of the white-pine tree, and clambering up into it, sat down to rest. The grapes, which I had watched throughout the summer, now dangled around me in abundant clusters of the deepest purple, deliciously sweet to the taste, and, though wild, jet free from that ungentle flavor which distinguishes nearl3' all our 556 THE BLTTHEDALE ROMANCE. native and uncultivated grapes. Metlionght a wine might be pressed out of them possessing a passionate zest, and endowed with a new kind of intoxicating quality, attended Avith such bacchanalian ecstasies as the tamer grapes of Madeira, France, and the Rhine are inadequate to produce. And I longed to quaff a great goblet of it that moment ! While devouring the grapes, I looked on all sides out of the peep-holes of my hermitage, and saw the farm-house, the fields, and ahnost every part of our domain, but not a single human figure in the land- scape. Some of the windows of the house were open, but with no more signs of life than in a dead man's imshut eyes. The barn-door was ajar, and swinging in the breeze. The big old dog, — he was a relic of the former dynasty of the farm, — that hardly ever stirred out of the yard, was nowhere to be seen. What, then, had become of all the fraternity and sis- terhood ? Curious to ascertain this point, I let myself down out of the tree, and going to the edge of the wood, was glad to perceive our herd of cows chewing the cud or grazing not far off. I fancied, by their manner, that two or three of them recognized me (as, indeed, they ought, for I had milked them and been their chamberlain times w^thout number) ; but, after staring me in the face a little while, they phlegmat- ically began grazing and chewdng their cuds again. Then I grew foolishly angry at so cold a reception, and flung some rotten fragments of an old stump at these unsentimental cows. Skirting farther round the pasture, I heard voices and much laughter proceeding from the interior of the wood. Voices, male and feminine ; laughter, not only of fresh young throats, but the bass of grown THE MASQUERADERS. 657 people, as if solemn organ-pipes shovikl pour out airs of merriment. Not a voice spoke, but I knew it bet- ter than my own ; not a laugh, but its cadences were familiar. The wood, in this portion of it, seemed as full of jollity as if Comus and kis crew were holding their revels in one of its usually lonesome glades. Stealing onward as far as I durst, without hazard of discovery, I saw a concourse of strange figures be- neath the overshadowing branches. They appeared, and vanished, and came again, confusedly with the streaks of sunlight glimmering do^\^l upon them. Among them was an Indian chief, with blanket, feathers and war-paint, and uplifted tomahawk ; and near him, looking fit to be his woodland - bride, the goddess Diana, with the crescent on her head, and at- tended by our big lazy dog, in lack of any fleeter hoimd. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, she let it fly at a venture, and hit the very tree behind which I happened to be lurking. Another group consisted of a Bavarian broom-girl, a negTo of the Jim Crow order, one or two foresters of tke Middle Ages, a Kentucky woodsman in his trimmed himting-shirt and deerskin leggings, and a Shaker elder, quaint, demure, broad-brimmed, and square - skirted. Shepherds of Arcadia, and allegoric figures from the Faerie Queen, were oddly mixed up with these. Arm in arm, or otherwise huddled together in strange discrepancy, stood grim Puritans, gay Cavaliers, and Revolu- tionary officers with three-cornered cocked hats, and queues longer than their swords. A bright-complex- ioned, dark-haired, vivacious little gypsy, with a red shawl over her head, went from one gi-oup to another, telling fortunes by palmistry ; and Moll Pitcher, the renowned old witch of Lynn, broomstick in hand. 558 777^; BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. showed herself prominently in the midst, as if announc- ing all these apparitions to be the offspring of her necromantic art. But Silas Foster, who leaned against a tree near by, in his customaiy blue frock, and smok- ing a short pipe, did more to disenchant the scene, with his look of shrewd, acrid, Yankee observation, than twenty witches and necromancers could have done in the way of rendering it weird and fantastic. A little farther off, some old-fashioned skinkers and drawers, all with portentously red noses, were spread- ing a banquet on the leaf -strewn earth ; while a horned and long-tailed gentleman (in whom I recognized the fiendish musician erst seen by Tam O'Shanter) tuned his fidtUe, and summoned the whole motley rout to a dance, before partaking of the festal cheer. So they joined hands in a circle, whirling round so swiftly, so madly, and so merrily, in time and tune with the Sa- tanic music, that their separate incongruities were blended all together, and they became a kind of en- tanglement that went nigh to turn one's brain with merely looking at it. Anon they stopt all of a sud- den, and staring at one another's figaires, set up a roar of laughter ; whereat a shower of the SejDtember leaves (which, all day long, had been hesitating whether to fall or no) were shaken off b}^ the movement of the ail', and came eddying down upon the revellers. Then, for lack of breath, ensued a silence, at the deepest point of which, tickled by the oddity of sur- prising my grave associates in this masquerading trim, I could not possibly refrain from a burst of laughter on my OAvn separate account. " Hush ! " I heard the pretty gypsy fortune-teller say. " Who is that laughing ? " " Some profane intruder ! " said the goddess Diana THE MASQUERADERS. 559 " I sliall send an arrow through his heart, or change him mto a stag, as I did Actaeon, if he peeps from be- hind the trees ! " "Me take his scalp!" cried the Indian chief, bran- dishing his tomahawk, and cutting a great caper in the air. " I '11 root huu in the earth Avith a spell that I have at my tongue's end ! " squeaked Moll Pitcher. " And the green moss shall grow all over him, before he gets free again ! " " The voice was Miles Coverdale's," said the fiend- ish fiddler, with a whisk of his tail and a toss of his horns. " My music has brought him hither. He is always ready to dance to the De\'il's tune ! " Thus put on the right track, they aU recognized the voice at once, and set up a simidtaueous shout. " Miles ! Miles ! Miles Coverdale, where are you ? " they cried. " Zenobia ! Queen Zenobia ! here is one of your vassals lurldng in the wood. Command him to approach and pay his duty ! " The whole fantastic rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so that I was like a mad poet hunted by chimeras. Ha^^ng fairly the start of them, how- ever, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their merriment and riot at a good distance in the rear. Its fainter tones assumed a kind of mournful- ness, and were finally lost in the hush and solemnity of the wood. In my haste, I stmnbled over a heap of logs and sticks that had been cut for fire-wood, a gTeat while ago, by some former possessor of the soil, and piled up square, in order to be carted or sledded away to the farm-house. But, being forgotten, they had lain there perhaps fifty years, and possibly much longer ; until, by the accumulation of moss, and the leaves fall- 560 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. ing over them, and (lecayiug there, from autumn to autuimi, a green moiuid was formed, in which the soft- ened outline of the wood-pile was still perceptible. In the fitful mood that then swayed my mind, I found something strangely affecting in this simple circum- stance. I imagined the long-dead woodman, and his long-dead wife and children, coming out of their chill graves, and essaying to make a fire with this heap of mossy fuel ! From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost in rev- erie, and neither knew nor cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, weU-remembered voice spoke, at a little distance. " There is Mr. Coverdale ! " " Miles Coverdale ! " said another voice, — and its tones were very stern. " Let him come forward, then ! " " Yes, Mr. Coverdale," cried a woman's voice, — clear and melodious, but, just then, with something unnatural in its chord, — " you are welcome ! But you come half an hour too late, and have missed a scene which you would have enjoyed ! " I looked up and found myself nigh Eliot's pulpit, at the base of which sat Hollingsworth, with Priscilla at his feet, and Zenobia standing before them. XXV. THE THREE TOGETHER. HOLLINGSWORTH was in his ordinary working- dress. Priscilla wore a pretty and simple gown, with a kerchief about her neck, and a calash, which she had flung back from her head, leaving it suspended by the strings. But Zenobia (whose part among the maskers, as may be supposed, was no inferior one) appeared in a costume of fancifid. magnificence, with her jewelled flower as the central ornament of what resembled a leafy crown, or coronet. She represented the Oriental princess by whose name we were accus- tomed to know her. Her attitude was free and noble ; yet, if a queen's, it was not that of a queen triumphant, but dethroned, on trial for her life, or, perchance, con- demned already. The spirit of the conflict seemed, nevertheless, to be alive in her. Her eyes were on fire ; her cheeks had each a crimson spot, so exceed- ingly vivid, and marked with so definite an outline, that I at first doubted whether it were not artificial. In a very brief space, however, this idea was shamed by the paleness that ensued, as the blood sunk sud- denly away. Zenobia now looked like marble. One always feels the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those who love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts them rato a sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to stand on equal ground with them. I was confused, VOL. V. 3G 562 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. — affected even with a species of terror, — and wished myself away. The intenseuess of their feelings gave them the exclusive property of the soil and atmos- phere, and left me no right to be or breathe there. " Hollingsworth, — Zenobia, — I have just returned to Blithedale," said I, " and had no thought of finding you here. We shall meet again at the house. I will retire." " This place is free to you," answered Hollings- worth. " As free as to ourselves," added Zenobia. " Tliis long while past, you have been following up youi- game, groping for human emotions in the dark cor- ners of the heart. Had you been here a little sooner, you might have seen them dragged into the daylight. I could even wish to have my trial over again, with you standing by to see fair play ! Do you know, Mr. Coverdale, I have been on trial for my life ? " She laughed, wliile speaking thus. But, in truth, as my eyes wandered from one of the group to an- other, I saw in HoUingsworth all that an artist could desire for the grim portrait of a Puritan magistrate holding inquest of life and death in a case of witch- craft: in Zenobia, the sorceress herseK, not aged, wrinkled, and decrepit, but fair enough to tempt Sa- tan with a force reciprocal to his own ; and, in Pris- cilla, the pale victim, whose soul and body had been wasted by her spells. Had a pile of fagots been heaped against the rock, this hint of impending doom would have completed the suggestive picture. " It was too hard upon me," continued Zenobia, addressing Hollingsworth, " that judge, jury, and ac- cuser should all be comprehended in one man ! I de- mur, as I think the lawyers say, to the jui'isdiction. THE THREE TOGETHER. 563 But let the learned Judge Coverdale seat himself on the top of the rock, and you and me stand at its base, side by side, pleading our cause before hi in ! There might, at least, be two criminals instead of one." "You forced this on me," repKed Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in the face. " Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder ? Do I assume to be your judge ? No ; except so far as I have an un- questionable right of judgment, in order to settle my own line of behavior towards those with whom the events of life bring me in contact. True, I have al- ready judged you, bat not on the world's part, — neither do I pretend to pass a sentence ! " " Ah, this is very good ! " cried Zenobia, with a smile. " What strange beings you men are, Mr. Coverdale ! — is it not so ? It is the simplest thing in the world with you to bring a woman before your secret tribunals, and judge and condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go free without a sentence. The/ misfortune is, that this same secret tribunal chancesj to be the only judgment-seat that a true woman standal in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquittal ia equivalent to a death-sentence ! " The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my impression that a crisis had just come and gone. On Rolling worth's brow it had left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his own will was the instrument. In Zenobia' s whole person, beholding her more closely, I saw a riotous agitation ; the almost delirious disquietude of a great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished one felt her strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed to renew the contest. My sensations were as if I had come upon a battle-field before the smoke was as yet cleared away. 564 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. And what subjects had been discussed here ? All, no doubt, that for so many months past had kept my heart and my imagiuatiou idly feverish. Zenobia's whole character and history ; the true nature of her mysterious connection with Westervelt ; her later pur- poses towards Hollingsworth, and, reciprocally, his in reference to her ; and, finally, the degree in which Ze- nobia had been cognizant of the plot against Priscilla, and what, at last, had been the real object of that scheme. On these points, as before, I was left to my o^vTi conjectures. One thing, only, was certain. Ze- nobia and Hollingsworth were friends no longer. If their heart-strings were ever intertwined, the knot had been adjudged an entanglement, and was now vio- lently broken. But Zenobia seemed imable to rest content with the matter in the postiu'e which it had assmned. " Ah ! do we part so ? " exclaimed she, seeing Hol- lingsworth about to retire. " And why not ? " said he, with almost rude abrupt- ness. " What is there further to be said between us?" " Well, perhaps nothing," answered Zenobia, look- ing him in the face, and smiling. " But we have come many times before to this gray rock, and we have talked very softly among the whisperings of the birch- trees. They were pleasant hours ! I love to make the latest of them, though not altogether so delightful, loiter away as slowly as may be. And, besides, you have put many queries to me at this, which you de- sign to be our last interview; and being driven, as I must acknowledge, into a corner, I have responded with reasonable frankness. But now, with your free consent, I desire the privilege of asking a few ques- tions, in my turn." THE THREE TOGETHER. 565 " I have no concealments," said Hollings worth. " We shall see," answered Zenobia. " I would first inquire whether you have supposed me to be wealthy?" " On that point," observed Hollingsworth, " I have had the oj^inion which the world holds." " And I held it likewise," said Zenobia. " Had I not. Heaven is my witness the knowledge should have been as free to you as me. It is only three days since I knew the strange fact that threatens to make me poor; and your own acquaintance with it, I suspect, is of at least as old a date. I fancied myself affluent. You are aware, too, of the disposition which I pur- posed making of the larger portion of my imaginary opulence, — nay, were it all, I had not hesitated. Let me ask you, further, did I ever propose or intimate any terms of compact, on which depended this — as the world would consider it — so unportant sacrifice? " " You certainly spoke of none," said Hollingsworth. " Nor meant any," she responded. " I was willing to realize your dream, freely, — generously, as some might think, — but, at all events, fully, and heedless though it should prove the ruin of my fortune. If, in your owTi thoughts, you have imposed any conditions of this expenditure, it is you that must be held re- sponsible for whatever is sordid and unworthy in them. And now one other question. Do you love this girl?" " O Zenobia ! " exclaimed PrisciUa, shrinking back, as if longing for the rock to topple over and hide her. " Do you love her ? " repeated Zenobia. " Had you asked me that question a short time since," replied Hollingsworth, after a pause, during which, it seemed to me, even the bu'ch-trees held their whispering breath, " I should have told you — ' No ! ' My feelings for PriscLlla differed little from those of 566 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. an elder brother, watching tenderly over the gentle sister whom God has given him to protect." " And what is your answer now ? " persisted Zeno- bia. " I do love her ! " said HoUingsworth, uttering the words with a deep inward breath, instead of speaking them outright. "As well declare it thus as in any other way. I do love her ! " " Now, God be judge between us," cried Zenobia, breaking into sudden passion, " which of us two has most mortally offended Ilim ! At least, I am a woman, with every fault, it may be, that a woman ever had, — weak, vain, unprincipled (like most of my sex ; for our virtues, when we have any, are merely impidsive and intuitive), passionate, too, and pursuing my fool- ish and unattainable ends by indirect and cunning, though absurdly chosen means, as an hereditary bond- slave must ; false, moreover, to the whole circle of good, in my reckless truth to the little good I saw be- fore me, — but still a woman ! A creature whom only a little change of earthly fortune, a little kinder smile of Him who sent me hither, and one true heart to encourage and direct me, might have made all that a woman can be ! But how is it with you ? Are you a man ? No ; but a monster ! A cold, heartless, seK- beginning and self-ending piece of mechanism ! " " With what, then, do you charge me ! " asked Hol- lingsworth, aghast, and gTeatly disturbed by this at- tack. " Show me one selfish end, in all I ever aimed at, and you may cut it out of my bosom with a knife ! " " It is all self ! " answered Zenobia, with still in- tenser bittei-ness. " Nothing else ; nothing but self, self, self ! The fiend, I doubt not, has made his choic- est mirth of you these seven years past, and especially THE THREE TOGETHER, 567 jn the mad summer which we have spent together. 1 see it now ! I am awake, disenchanted, disinthralled ! Self, seK, self ! You have embodied yourself in a pro- ject. You are a better masquerader than the witches and gypsies yonder ; for your disguise is a seK-decep- tion. See whither it has brought you ! First, you aimed a death-blow, and a treacherous one, at this scheme of a purer and liigher life, which so many no- ble spirits had wrought out. Then, because Cover- dale coidd not be quite your slave, you threw him ruthlessly away. And you took me, too, into your plan, as long as there was hope of my being available, and now fling me aside again, a broken tool ! But, foremost and blackest of your sins, you stifled down your inmost consciousness ! — you did a deadly wrong to your own heart ! — you were ready to sacrifice this girl, whom, if God ever visibly showed a purpose. He put into your charge, and through whom He was striv- ing to redeem you ! " " This is a woman's view," said Hollingsworth, gTow- ing deadly pale, — "a woman's, whose whole sphere of action is in the heart, and who can conceive of no higher nor wider one ! " " Be silent ! " cried Zenobia, imperiously. " You know neither man nor woman ! The utmost that can be said in your behalf — and because I would not be wholly despicable in my own eyes, but would fain ex- cuse my wasted feelings, nor own it wholly a delu- sion, therefore I say it — is, that a great and rich heart has been ruined in your breast. Leave me, now. You have done with me, and I with you. Farewell ! " " Priscilla," said Hollingsworth, " come." Zenobia smiled ; possibly I did so too. Not often, in human life, has a gnawing sense of injury found a 568 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. sweeter morsel of revenge than was conveyed in the tone with which Hollingsworth spoke those two words. It was the abased and tremulons tone of a man whose faith in himself was shaken, and who sought, at last, to lean on an affection. Yes ; the strong man bowed himself and rested on this poor Priscilla! Oh, coidd she have failed him, what a triumph for the lookers- on ! And, at first, I half imagined that she was about to fail him. She rose up, stood shivering like the birch- leaves that trembled over her head, and then slowly tottered, rather than walked, towards Zenobia. Arriv- ing at her feet, she sank down there, in the very same attitude wliich she had assumed on their first meeting, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Zenobia remem- bered it. " Ah, Priscilla ! " said she, shaking her head, " how much is changed since then ! You kneel to a dethroned princess. You, the victorious one ! But he is waiting for you. Say what you wish, and leave me." " We are sisters ! " gasped Priscilla. I fancied that I understood the word and action. It meant the offering of herself, and all she had, to be at Zenobia's disposal. But the latter would not take it thus. " True, we are sisters ! " she replied ; and, moved by the sweet word, she stooped down and kissed Pris- cilla ; but not lovingly, for a sense of fatal harm re- ceived through her seemed to be lurking in Zenobia's heart. " We had one father ! You knew it from the first ; I, but a little while, — else some things that have chanced might have been spared you. But I never wished you harm. You stood between me and an end which I desired. I wanted a clear path. No THE THREE TOGETHER. 569 matter what I meant. It is over now. Do you for- give me ? " " O Zenobia," sobbed Priscilla, " it is I that feel like the guilty one ! " " No, no, poor little thing ! " said Zenobia, with a sort of contempt. " You have been my evil fate , but there never was a babe with less strength or will to do an injury. Poor child ! Methinks you have but a melancholy lot before you, sitting all alone in that wide, cheerless heart, where, for aught you know, — and as I, alas ! believe, — the fire which you have kindled may soon go out. Ah, the thought makes me shiver for you ! What will you do, Priscilla, when you find no spark among the ashes ? " " Die ! " she answered. " That was well said ! " responded Zenobia, with an approving smile. " There is all a woman in your lit- tle compass, my poor sister. Meanwhile, go with him, and live ! " She waved her away, with a queenly gesture, and turned her own face to the rock. I watched Priscilla, wondering what judgment she would pass between Ze- nobia and HoUingsworth ; how interpret his behavior, so as to reconcile it with true faith both towards her sister and herself ; how compel her love for him to keep any terms whatever with her sisterly affection ! But, in truth, there was no such difficulty as I imag- ined. Her engrossing love made it all clear. Hol- lingsworth could have no fault. That was the one principle at the centre of the universe. And the doubtful guilt or possible integrity of other people, appearances, self-evident facts, the testunony of her own senses, — even Hollingsworth's self - accusation, had he volunteered it, — would have weighed not the 570 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. value of a mote of thistle-down on the other side. So secure was she of his right, that she never thought of comparing it with another's wrong, but left the latter to itself. Hollingsworth drew her arm within his, and soon disappeared with her among the trees. I cannot im- agine how Zenobia knew when they were out of sight ; she never glanced again towards them. But, retaining a proud attitude so long as they might have thrown back a retiring look, they were no sooner departed, — utterly departed, — than she began slowly to sink down. It was as if a great, invisible, irresistible weight wei-e pressing her to the earth. Settling upon her knees, she leaned her forehead against the rock, and sobbed convailsively ; dry sobs they seemed to be, such as have nothing to do with tears. XXVI. ZENOBIA AND COVEEDALE. Zenobia had entirely forgotten me. Slie fancied herself alone with her great grief. And had it been only a common pity that I felt for her, — the pity that her proud nature would have repelled, as the one worst wrong which the world yet held in reserve, — the sacredness and awf ulness of the crisis might have impelled me to steal away silently, so that not a dry leaf should rustle under my feet. I would have left her to struggle, in that solitude, with only the eye of God upon her. But, so it happened, I never once dreamed of questioning my right to be there now, as I had questioned it just before, when I came so suddenly upon Hollingsworth and herself, in the passion of their recent debate. It suits me not to explain what was the analogy that I saw or imagined, between Zenobia's situation and mine ; nor, I believe, will the reader de- tect this one secret, hidden beneath many a revelation which perhaps concerned me less. In simple truth, however, as Zenobia leaned her forehead against the rock, shaken with that tearless agony, it seemed to me that the seK-same pang, with hardly mitigated torment, leaped thrilling from her heart-strings to my own. Was it wrong, therefore, if I felt myself consecrated to the priesthood by sympathy like this, and called upon to minister to this woman's affliction, so far as mortal could ? 572 THE B7JTHEDALE ROMANCE. But, indeed, what could mortal do for her ? Noth- ing ! The attempt would be a mockery and an an- guish. Time, it is true, would steal away her grief, and bury it and the best of her heart in the same grave. But Destiny itself, methought, in its kindliest mood, coidd do no better for Zenobia, in the way of quick relief, than to cause the impending rock to un- pend a little farther, and fall upon her head. So T leaned against a tree, and listened to her sobs, in un- broken silence. She was half prostrate, half kneel- ing, with her forehead still pressed against the rock. Her sobs were the only sound ; she did not groan, nor give any other utterance to her distress. It was all involuntary. At length she sat up, put back her hair, and stared about her with a bewildered aspect, as if not distinctly recollecting the scene through which she had passed, nor cocnizant of the situation in which it left her. Her face and brow were almost purple with the rush of blood. They whitened, however, by and by, and for some time retained this death-like hue. She put her hand to her forehead, with a gesture that made me forcibly conscious of an intense and living pain there. Her glance, wandering wildly to and fro, passed over me several times, without appearing to inform her of my presence. But, finally, a look of recogni- tion gleamed from her eyes into mine. " Is it you, Miles Coverdale ? " said she, smiling. " Ah, I perceive what you are about ! You are turn- ing this whole affair into a ballad. Pray let me hear as many stanzas as you happen to have ready." " Oh, hush, Zenobia ! " I answered. " Heaven knows what an ache is in my soul ! " " It is genuine tragedy, is it not ? " rejoined Zeno- ZENOBIA AND COVERDALE. 573 bla, with a sharp, light laugh. " And you are willing to allow, perhaps, that I have had hard measure. But it is a woman's doom, and I have deserved it like a woman ; so let there be no pity, as, on my part, there shall be no complaint. It is all right, now, or will shortly be so. But, Mr. Coverdale, by all means write this ballad, and put your soul's ache into it, and tiu-n your sympathy to good account, as other poets do, and as poets must, unless they choose to give us glittering icicles instead of lines of fire. As for the moral, it shall be distilled into the final stanza, in a drop of bit- ter honey." "What shall it be, Zenobia? " I inquired, endeav- oring to fall in with her mood. " Oh, a very old one will serve the purpose," she re- plied. " There are no new truths, much as we have prided ourselves on finding some. A moral? Why, this: That, in the battle-field of life, the downright stroke, that would fall only on a man's steel head- piece, is sure to light on a woman's heart, over which she wears no breast - plate, and whose wisdom it is, therefore to keej) out of the conflict. Or, this : That the whole imiverse, her own sex and yours, and Provi- dence, or Destiny, to boot, make common cause against the woman who swerves one hair's-breadth, out of the beaten track. Yes ; and add (for I may as well own it, now) that, with that one hair's-breadth, she goes all astray and never sees the world in its true aspect after- wards." " This last is too stern a moral," I observed. " Can- not we soften it a little ? " " Do it if you like, at yom* own peril, not on my responsibility," she answered. Then, with a sudden change of subject, she went on : " After all, he has 574 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. flung- away what would have served him better than the poor, pale flower he kept. What can Priscilla do for him ? Put passionate warmth into his heart, when it shall be chilled with frozen hopes? Strengthen his hands, when they are weary with much doing and no performance ? No ! but only tend towards him with a blind, instinctive love, and hang her little, puny weakness for a clog upon his arm ! She cannot even give liini such sympathy as is worth the name. For will he never, in many an hour of darkness, need that proud intellectual sympathy which he might have had from me? — the sympathy that woidd flash light along his course, and guide as well as cheer Imn ? Poor Ilollingsworth ! Where will he find it now ? " " Hollingsworth has a heart of ice ! " said I, bit- terly. " He is a wretch ! " '' Do him no wrong," interrupted Zenobia, turning haughtily upon me. " Presume not to estimate a man like Hollingsworth. It was my fault, all along, and none of his. I see it now ! He never sought me. Why should he seek me ? What had I to offer him ? A miserable, bruised, and battered heart, spoilt long before he met me. A life, too, hopelessly entangled with a ^^llain's ! He did well to cast me off. God be praised, he did it ! And yet, had he trusted me, and borne with me a little longer, I would have saved him all this trouble." She was silent for a time, and stood with her eyes fixed on the ground. Again raising them, her look was more mild and calm. " Miles Coverdale ! " said she. " Well, Zenobia," I responded. " Can I do you any service ? " ** Very little," she replied. " But it is my pur- ZEN OBI A AND COVERDALE. 675 pose, as you may well imagine, to remove from Blithe- dale ; and, most likely, I may not see Hollingsworth again. A woman in my position, you miderstand, feels scarcely at her ease among former friends. New faces, — unaccustomed looks, — those only can she tolerate. She would pine among familiar scenes ; she would be apt to blush, too, mider the eyes that knew her secret ; her heart might throb uncomfortably ; she would mortify herself, I suppose, with foolish notions of having sacrificed the honor of her sex at the foot of proud, contumacious man. Poor womanhood, with its rights and wrongs ! Here will be new matter for my course of lectures, at the idea of which you smiled, Mr. Coverdale, a month or two ago. But, as you have really a heart and sympathies, as far as they go, and as I shall depart without seeing Hollingsworth, I must entreat you to be a messenger between him and me." " Willingly," said I, wondering at the strange way in which her mind seemed to vibrate from the deepest earnest to mere levity. " What is the message ? " " True, — what is it ? " exclaimed Zenobia. " After all, I hardly know. On better consideration, I have no message. Tell him, — tell him something pretty and pathetic, that will come nicely and sweetly into your ballad, — anything you please, so it be tender and submissive enough. Tell him he has murdered me ! Tell him that I '11 haunt him ! " — She spoke these words with the wildest energy. — " And give him — no, give Priscilla — this ! " Thus saying, she took the jewelled flower out of her hair ; and it struck me as the act of a queen, when worsted in a combat, discrowning herself, as if she found a sort of relief in abasing all her pride. " Bid her wear this for Zenobia's sake," she con- C)16 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. tinned. " She is a pi-etty little creature, and wiU make as soft and gentle a wife as the veriest Blue- beard could desire. Pity that she must fade so soon ! These delicate and puny maidens always do. Ten years hence, let Hollingsworth look at my face and Priscilla's, and then choose betwixt them. Or, if he pleases, let him do it now." How magnificently Zenobia looked as she said this ! The effect of her beauty was even heightened by the over-consciousness and self-recognition of it, into which, I suppose, Hollingsworth's scorn had driven her. She understood the look of admiration in my face ; and — Zenobia to the last — it gave her pleas- ure. " It is an endless pity," said she, " that I had not bethought myself of winning your heart, Mr. Cover- dale, instead of Hollingsworth's. I think I should have succeeded, and many women would have deemed you the worthier conquest of the two. You are cer- tainly much the handsomest man. But there is a fate in these things. And beauty, in a man, has been of little account with me, since my earliest girlhood, when, for once, it turned my head. Now, farewell ! " " Zenobia, whither are you going ? " I asked. " No matter where," said she. " But I am weary of this place, and sick to death of playing at philanthropy and progress. Of all varieties of mock-life, we have surely blmidered into the very emptiest mockery in om* effort to establish the one true system. I have done with it ; and Blithedale must find another woman to superintend the laundry, and you, Mr Coverdale, another nurse to make your gruel, the next time you fall ill. It was, indeed, a foolish dream ! Yet it gave us some pleasant summer days, and bright hopes, ZENOBIA AND COVERDALE. bll while they lasted. It can do no more ; nor will it avail us to shed tears over a broken bubble. Here is ray hand ! Adieu ! " She gave me her hand, with the same free, whole- souled gesture as on the first afternoon of ovir ac- quaintance, and, being greatly moved, I bethought me of no better method of expressing my deep sympathy than to carry it to my lips. In so doing, I perceived that this white hand — so hospitably warm when I first touched it, five months since — was now cold as a veritable piece of snow. " How very cold ! " I exclaimed, holding it between both my own, with the vain idea of warming it. " What can be the reason ? It is really death-like ! " " The extremities die first, they say," answered Ze- nobia, laughing. "And so you kiss this poor, de- spised, rejected hand ! Well, my dear friend, I thank you. You have reserved your homage for the fallen. Lip of man will never touch my hand again. I in- tend to become a Catholic, for the sake of going into a nunnery. When you next hear of Zenobia, her face wiU be behind the black veil ; so look your last at it now, — for all is over. Once more, farewell ! " She withdrew her hand, yet left a lingering press- ure, which I felt long afterwards. So intimately con- nected as I had been with perhaps the only man in whom she was ever truly interested, Zenobia, looked on me as the representative of all the past, and was conscious that, in bidding me adieu, she likewise took final leave of HoUiagsworth, and of this whole epoch of her life. Never did her beauty shine out more lus- trously than in the last glimpse that I had of her. She departed, and was soon hidden among the trees. But, whether it was the strong impression of the VOL- V. 37 578 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. foregoing scene, or whatever else the cause, I was' affected with a fantasy that Zenobia had not actually gone, but was still hovering about the spot and haunt>- ing it. I seemed to feel her eyes upon me. It was as if the vivid coloring of her character had left a brilliant stain upon the air. By degrees, however, the impression grew less distinct. I flung myself upon the fallen leaves at the base of Eliot's pidpit. The sunshine withdrew up the tree-trunks, and flick- ered on the topmost boughs ; gray twilight made the wood obscure ; the stars brightened out ; the pendent bouffhs became wet with chill autumnal dews. But I was listless, worn out with emotion on my own behalf and sympathy for others, and had no heart to leave my comfortless lair beneath the rock. I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circiun stances of which utterly vanished at the mo- ment when they converged to some tragical catastro- phe, and thus grew too powerfid for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them. Starting from the ground, I found the risen moon shining upon the rug- ged face of the rock, and myself all in a tremble. xxvn. MIDNIGHT. It could not have been far from midnight when 1 came beneath HoUingsworth's window, and, finding it open, flimg in a tuft of grass ^vith earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon the floor. He was either awake or sleeping very lightly ; for scarcely a moment had gone by, before he looked out and discerned me stand- ing in the moonlight. " Is it you, Coverdale ? " he asked. " What is the matter? " " Come down to me, Hollingsworth ! " I answered. " I am anxious to speak with you." The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less. He lost no time, and soon issued from the house -door, with his dress half ar- ranged. " Again, what is the matter ? " he asked, impa- tiently. " Have you seen Zenobia," said I, " since you parted from her at Eliot's pulpit ? " " No," answered Hollingsworth ; " nor did I expect it." His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it. Hardly had he spoken, when Silas Foster thrust his head, done up in a cotton handkerchief, out of another win- dow, and took what he called — as it literally was — a squint at us. 580 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. " Well, folks, what are ye about here ? " he de- manded. " Aha ! are you there. Miles Coverdale ? You have been turning night into day since you left us, I reckon ; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling about the house at this time o' night, fright- ening my old woman out of her wits, and making her disturb a tired man out of his best nap. In with you, you vagabond, and to bed ! " " Dress yourself quickly, Foster," said I. " We want your assistance." I coidd not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out my voice. Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in it as well as Hollingsworth did. He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he hurried on his clothes. Meanwliile, I showed Hollingsworth a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had found it, and other circumstances, which had filled me with a suspicion so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself. By the time my brief ex- planation was finished, we were joined by Silas Foster, in his blue woollen frock. " Well, boys," cried he, peevislily, " what is to pay now ? " " Tell him, Hollingsworth," said I. Hollingsworth shivered, perceptibly, and drew in a hard breath betwixt his teeth. He steadied himself, however, and, looking the matter more firmly in the face than I had done, explained to Foster my suspi- cions, and the grounds of them, with a distinctness from which, in spite of my utmost efforts, my words had swerved aside. The tough-nerved yeoman, in his MIDNIGHT. 581 comment, put a finish on the business, and brought out the hideous idea in its full terror, as if he were removing the napkin from the face of a corpse. " And so you think she 's drowned herseK ? " he cried. I tui'ned away my face. " What on earth should the young woman do that for ? " exclaimed Silas, his eyes half out of his head with mere surprise. " Why, she has more means than she can use or waste, and lacks nothing to make her comfortable, but a husband, and that 's an article she coidd have, any day. There 's some mistake about this, I tell you ! " " Come," said I, shuddering ; '^' let us go and ascer- tain the truth." " Well, well," answered Silas Foster ; " just as you say. We '11 take the long pole, with the hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket out of the draw-well, when the rope is broken. With that, and a couple of long-handled hay-rakes, I '11 answer for finding her, if she 's anywhere to be found. Strange enough I Ze- nobia drown herself ! No, no ; I don't believe it. She had too much sense, and too much means, and enjoyed life a great deal too well." When our few preparations were completed, we has- tened, by a shorter than the customary route, through fields and pastures, and across a portion of the mead- ow, to the particular spot on the river-bank which I had paused to contemplate in the course of my after- Qoon's ramble. A nameless presentiment had again drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot's pulpit. I showed my companions where I had found the hand- kerchief, and pointed to two or three footsteps, im- pressed into the clayey margin, and tending towards the water. Beneath its shallow verge, among the 582 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. water-weeds, there were further traces, as yet unoblit- eratecl by the sluggish current, which was there al- most at a stand-still. Silas Foster thrust his face down close to these footsteps, and picked up a shoe that had escaped my observation, being half imbed- ded in the mud. " There 's a kid shoe that never was made on a Yan- kee last," observed he. " I know enough of shoemak- er's craft to teU that. French manufacture ; and, see what a high instep ! and how evenly she trod in it ! There never was a woman that stept handsomer in her shoes than Zenobia did. Here," he added, addressing HoUingsworth, " would you like to keep the shoe ? " Hollingsworth started back. " Give it to me, Foster," said I. I dabbled it in the water, to rinse off the mud, and have kept it ever since. Not far from this spot lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up on the oozy river-side, and generally half full of water. It served the angler to go in quest of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his wild ducks. Setting this crazy bark afloat, I seated myself in the stern with the paddle, while Hollings- worth sat in the bows with the hooked pole, and Silas Foster amidships with a hay-rake. " It puts me in mind of my young days," remarked Silas, " when I used to steal out of bed to go bobbing for hornpouts and eels. Heigh-ho ! — well, life and death together make sad work for us all! Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish ; and now I am getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body ! I teU you what, lads ; if I thought anji;hing had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful." " I wish, at least, you would hold your tongue," muttered I. MIDNIGHT. 683 The moon, that night, though past the full, was still large and oval, and having risen between eight and nine o'clock, now shone aslantwise over the river, thi'owing the high, opposite bank, with its woods, into deep shadow, but lighting up the hither shore pretty effectually. Not a ray appeared to fall on the river itself. It lapsed imperceptibly away, a broad, black, inscrutable depth, keeping its own secrets from the eye of man, as impenetrably as mid-ocean could. " Well, Miles Coverdale," said Foster, " you are the helmsman. How do you mean to manage this business ? " " I shall let the boat drift, broadside foremost, past that stump," I replied. " I know the bottom, having sounded it in fishing. The shore, on this side, after the first step or two, goes off very abruptly ; and there is a pool, just by the stump, twelve or fifteen feet deep. The current could not have force enough to sweep any sunken object, even if partially buoyant, out of that hoUow." " Come, then," said Silas ; " but I doubt whether I can touch bottom with this hay-rake, if it 's as deep as you say. Mr. Hollingsworth, I think you '11 be the lucky man to-night, such luck as it is." We floated past the stiunp. Silas Foster plied his rake manfully, poking it as far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm be- sides. Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked pole elevated in the air. But, by and by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over the side of the boat. So obscure, however, so awfully 584 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. mysterious, was that dark sti'eam, that — and the thought made me shiver like a leaf — I might as well have tried to look into the enigma of the eternal world, to discover what had become of Zenobia's soul, as into the river's depths, to find her body. And there, per- haps, she lay, with her face upward, while the shadow of the boat, and my own pale face peeling downward, passed slowly betwixt her and the sky ! Once, twice, thrice, I paddled the boat up stream, and again suffered it to glide, with the river's slow, funereal motion, downward. Silas Foster had raked up a large mass of stuff, which, as it came towards the surface, looked somewhat like a flowing garment, but proved to be a monstrous tuft of water- weeds. Hol- lingsworth, with a gigantic effort, upheaved a sunken log. When once free of the bottom, it rose partly out of water, — all weedy and slimy, a devilish-looking ob- ject, which the moon had not shone upon for half a hmidred years, — then plunged again, and sullenly re- turned to its old resting-place, for the remnant of the century, " That looked ugly ! " quoth Silas. " I half thought it was the Evil One, on the same errand as ourselves, — searching for Zenobia." " He shaU never get her," said I, giving the boat a strong impulse. " That 's not for you to say, my boy," retorted the yeoman. " Pray God he never has, and never may. Slow work this, however ! I should really be glad to fmd something ! Pshaw ! What a notion that is, when the only good luck would be to paddle, and drift, and poke, and grope, hereabouts, tiU morning, and have our labor for our pains ! For my part, I should n't wonder if the creature had only lost her shoe in the MIDNIGHT. 585 mud, and saved her soui alive, after all. My stars ! how she will laugh at us, to-morrow morning ! " It is indescribable what an imag-e of Zenobia — at the breakfast-table, full of warm and mirthful life — ■ this surmise of Silas Foster's brought before my mind. The terrible phantasm of her death was thrown by it into the remotest and dimmest backgromid, where it seemed to grow as unprobable as a myth. " Yes, Silas, it may be as you say," cried I. The drift of the stream had again borne us a little below the stump, when I felt — yes, felt, for it was as if the iron hook had smote my breast — felt Hollings- worth's pole strike some object at the bottom of the river ! He started up, and almost overset the boat. " Hold on ! " cried Foster ; " you have her ! " Putting a fury of strength into the effort, Hollings- worth heaved amain, and up came a white swash to the surface of the river. It was the flow of a woman's garments. A little higher, and we saw her dark hair streaming down the current. Black River of Death, thou hadst yielded ujj thy victim ! Zenobia was found ! Silas Foster laid hold of the body ; Hollingsworth, like\vise, gi'appled with it ; and I steered towards the bank, gazing all the while at Zenobia, whose limbs were swaying in the ciuTent close at the boat's side. Arriving near the shore, we all three stept into the water, bore her out, and laid her on the groimd be- neath a tree. " Poor child ! " said Foster, — and his dry old heart, I verily believe, vouchsafed a tear, — " I 'm sorry for her ! " Were I to describe the perfect horror of the specta- cle, the reader might justly reckon it to me for a sin 686 THE BLITIIEDALE ROMANCE. and shame. For more than twelve long years I have borne it in my memory, and could now reproduce it as freshly as if it were still before my eyes. Of all modes of death, methinks it is the ugliest. Her wet gar- ments swathed limbs of terrible inflexibility. She was the marble image of a death-agony. Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent before her with clenched hands ; her knees, too, were bent, and — thank God for it ! — in the attitude of prayer. Ah, that rigidity ! It is impossible to bear the terror of it. It seemed, — I nmst needs impart so much of my own miserable idea, — it seemed as if her body must keep the same position in the coffin, and that her skeleton would keep it in the grave ; and that when Zenobia rose at the day of judgment, it woidd be in just the same attitude as now ! One hope I had, and that too was mingled half with fear. She knelt as if in prayer. With the last, chok- ing consciousness, her soul, bubbling out through her lips, it may be, had given itself up to the Father, rec- onciled and penitent. But her arms ! They were bent before her, as if she struggled against Providence in never-ending hostility. Her hands ! They were clenched in immitigable defiance. Away mth the hid- eous thought. The flitting moment after Zenobia sank into the dark pool — when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips — was as long, in its capacity of God's infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the world ! Foster bent over the body, and carefully examined it. " You have wounded the poor thing's breast," said he to HoUingsworth ; " close by her heart, too ! " " Ha ! " cried HoUingsworth, with a start. And so he had, indeed, both before and after death 1 MIDNIGHT. 587 " See ! " said Foster. " That 's the place where the iron struck her. It looks cruelly, but she never felt it!" He endeavored to arrange the arms of the corpse decently by its side. His utmost strength, however, scarcely sufficed to bring them down ; and rismg again, the next instant, they bade him defiance, ex- actly as before. He made another effort, with the same result. " In God's name, Silas Foster," cried I, with bitter indignation, " let that dead woman alone ! " " Why, man, it 's not decent ! " answered he, star- ino; at me in amazement. " I can't bear to see her looking so ! Well, well," added he, after a third ef- fort, " 't is of no use, sure enough ; and we must leave the women to do their best with her, after we get to the house. The sooner that 's done, the better." We took two rails from a neighboring fence, and formed a bier by laying across some boards from the bottom of the boat. And thus we bore Zenobia home- ward. Six hours before, how beautiful ! At mid- night, what a horror ! A reflection occurs to me that will show ludicrously, I doubt not, on my page, but mvist come in, for its sterling truth. Being the woman that she was, could Zenobia have foreseen all these ugly circmnstances of death, — how ill it would be- come her, the altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old Silas Foster's efforts to improve the matter, — she would no more have committed the dreadful act than have exhibited her- seK to a public assembly in a badly fitting garment ! Zenobia, I have often thought, was not quite simple in her death. She had seen pictures, I suppose, of dro^\^led persons in lithe and graceful attitudes. And 688 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. she deemed it well and decorous to die as so many village maidens have, wronged in their first love, and seeking peace in the bosom of the old familiar stream, — so familiar that they could not dread it, — where, in childhood, they used to bathe their little feet, wad- ing mid-leg deep, miniindful of wet skirts. But in Zenobia's case there was some tint of the Arcadian affectation that had been visible enough in all our lives for a few months past. This, however, to my conception, takes nothing from the tragedy. For, has not the world come to an aw- fidly sophisticated pass, when, after a certain degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot even put ourselves to death in whole-hearted simplicity? Slowly, slowly, ^^dth many a dreary pause, — resting the bier often on some rock or balancing it across a mossy log, to take fresh hold, — we bore our burden onward through the moonlight, and at last laid Zeno- bia on the floor of the old farm-house. By and by came three or four withered women, and stood whis- pering around the corpse, peering at it through their spectacles, holding up their skinny hands, shaking their night-capped heads, and taking coimsel of one another's experience what was to be done. With those tire-women we left Zeuobia. XXVIII. BLITHEDALE PASTURE. Blitheuale, thus far in its progress, had never found the necessity of a burial - ground. There was some consultation among us in what spot Zenobia might most fitly be laid. It was my own wish that she shoidd sleep at the base of Eliot's pulpit, and that on the rugged front of the rock the name by which we familiarly knew her, — Zenobia, — and not another word, shoidd be deeply cut, and left for the moss and lichens to fill up at their long leisure. But Hollingsworth (to whose ideas on this point great def- erence was due) made it his request that her grave might be dug on the gently sloping hill-side, in the wide pasture, where, as we once supposed, Zenobia and he had planned to build their cottage. And thus it was done, accordingly. She was buried very much as other peojjle have been for himdreds of years gone by. In anticipation of a death, we Blithedale colonists had sometimes set our fancies at work to arrange a fimereal ceremony, which should be the proper symbolic expression of our spirit- ual faith and eternal hopes ; and this we meant to sub- stitute for those customary rites which were moulded originally out of the Gothic gloom, and by long use, like an old velvet pall, have so much more than their first death -smell in them. But when the occasion came we found it the simplest and truest thing, after 590 THE BLITHE DALE ROMANCE. all, to content ourselves with the old fasliion, taking away what we could, but interpolatmg no novelties, and particularly avoiding all frippery of flowers and cheerful emblems. The procession moved from the farm-house. Nearest the dead walked an old man in deep mourning, his face mostly concealed in a white handkercliief, and with Priscilla leaning on his arm. Ilollingsworth and myself came next. We all stood around the narrow niche in the cold earth ; all saw the coffin lowered in ; all heard the rattle of the cnunbly soil upon its lid, — that final sound, which mortality awakens on the utmost verge of sense, as if in the vain hope of bringing an echo from the spiritual world. I noticed a stranger, — a stranger to most of those present, though kno\\Ti to me, — who, after the coffin had descended, took up a handful of earth, and flimg it first into the gi'ave. I had given up Hollingsworth's arm, and now found myself near this man. " It was an idle thing — a foolish thing — for Ze- nobia to do," said he. " She was the last woman in the world to whom death could have been necessary. It was too absurd ! I have no patience with her." " Why so ? " I inquired, smothering my horror at his cold comment, in my eager curiosity to discover some tangible truth as to his relation with Zenobia. " If any crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered to herself, it was surely that in which she stood. Everything had failed her; prosperity in the world's sense, for her opulence was gone, — the heart's pros- perity, in love. And there was a secret burden on her, the nature of which is best known to you. Young as she was, she had ti-ied life fully, had no more to hope, and something, perhaps, to fear. Had Pro\d- dence taken her away in its own holy hand, I should BLITHE DALE PASTURE. 591 have thought it the kindest dispensation that could be awarded to one so wrecked." " You mistake the matter completely," rejoined Westervelt. " What, then, is your own view of it ? " I asked. " Her mind was active, and various in its powers," said he. " Her heart had a manifold adaptation ; her constitution an infinite buoyancy, wliich (had she pos- sessed only a little patience to await the reflux of her troubles) would have borne her upward triumphantly for twenty years to come. Her beauty would not have waned — or scarcely so, and surely not beyond the reach of art to restore it — in all that time. She had life's summer all before her, and a hundred varieties of brilliant success. What an actress Zenobia might have been ! It was one of her least valuable capabili- ties. How forcibly she might have wrought upon the world, either directly in her own person, or by her in- fluence upon some man, or a series of men, of con- trolling genius ! Every prize that could be worth a woman's having — and many prizes which other women are too timid to desire — lay within Zenobia's reach." " In all this," I observed, " there would have been nothing to satisfy her heart." " Her heart ! " answered Westervelt, contemptu- ously. " That troublesome organ (as she had hitherto found it) would have been kept in its due place and degree, and have had all the gratification it could fairly claim. She would soon have established a con- trol over it. Love had failed her, you say. Had it never failed her before ? Yet she survived it, and loved again, — possibly not once alone, nor twice either. And now to drown herself for yonder dreamy philanthropist ! " 592 THE BUTHEDALE ROMANCE. "Who are you," I exclaimed, indi^iantly, "that dare to speak thus of the dead ? You seem to intend a eulogy, yet leave out whatever was noblest in her, and blacken wliile you mean to praise. I have long considered you as Zenobia's evil fate. Your senti- ments confirm me in the idea, but leave me still igno- rant as to the mode in which you have influenced her life. The connection may have been indissoluble, ex- cept by death. Then, indeed, — always in the hope of God's infinite mercy, — I cannot deem it a misfor- tune that she sleeps in yonder grave ! " " No matter what I was to her," he answered, gloomily, yet without actual emotion. " She is now beyond my reach. Had she lived, and hearkened to my counsels, we might have served each other well. But there Zenobia lies in yonder pit, with the dull earth over her. Twenty years of a brilliant lifetime thrown away for a mere woman's whim ! " Heaven deal with Westervelt according to his na- tiu'e and deserts ! — that is to say, annihilate him. He was altogether earthy, worldly, made for time and its gi-oss objects, and incajiable — except by a sort of dim reflection caught from other minds — of so much as one spiritual idea. Whatever stain Zenobia had was caught from him ; nor does it seldom happen that a character of admirable qualities loses its better life because the atmosphere that shoidd sustain it is ren- dered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled \vith Zenobia's. Yet his reflections possessed their share of ti'uth. It was a woful thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably defeated on the broad battle-field of life, and with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because Love had gone against her- BLITHEDALE PASTURE. 593 It is nonsense, and a miserable wrong, —the result, like so many others, of masculine egotism, — that the success or failure of woman's existence should be made to depend wholly on the affections, and on one species of affection, while man has such a multitude of other chances, that this seems but an incident. For its own sake, if it will do no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to the passport of a woman's bleeding heart. As we stood aroimd the grave, I looked often to- wards Priscilla, dreading to see her wholly overcome with grief. And deeply grieved, in truth, she was. But a character so simply constituted as hers has room only for a single predominant affection. No other feeling can touch the heart's inmost core, nor do it any deadly mischief. Thus, while we see that such a being responds to every breeze with tremulous vi- bration, and imagine that she must be shattered by the first rude blast, we find her retaining her equilib- rium amid shocks that might have overthrown many a sturdier frame. So with Priscilla ; her one possible misfortune was Hollingsworth's unkindness ; and that was destined never to befall her, — never yet, at least, for Priscilla has not died. But Hollingsworth ! After all the evil that he did, are we to leave him thus, blest with the entire devo- tion of this one true heart, and with wealth at his dis- posal to execute the long-contemplated project that had led him so far astray ? What retribution is there here? My mind being vexed with precisely this query, I made a journey, some years since, for the sole pur- pose of catching a last glimpse of Hollingsworth, and judging for myself whether he were a happy man or no. I learned that he inhabited a small cottage, that VOL. V. 38 694 THE BLTTUEDALE ROMANCE. his way of life was exceedingly retired, and that my only chance of encountering him or Priscilla was to meet them in a secluded lane, where, in the latter part of the afternoon, they were accustomed to walk. I did meet them, accordingly. As they approached me, I observed in Hollingsworth's face a depressed and mel- ancholy look, that seemed habitual ; the powerfully built man showed a self-distrustfid weakness, and a childlike or childish tendency to press close, and closer still, to the side of the slender woman whose arm was \vithin his. In Priscilla's manner there was a pro- tective and watchful quality, as if she felt herself the guardian of her companion ; but, likewise, a deep, sub- missive, unquestioning reverence, and also a veiled happiness in her fair and quiet countenance. Drawing nearer, Priscilla recognized me, and gave me a land and friendly smile, but with a slight ges- ture, which I could not help interpreting as an en- treaty not to make myself known to HoUingsworth. Nevertheless, an impulse took possession of me, and compelled me to address him. " I have come, HoUingsworth," said I, " to view your grand edifice for the reformation of criminals. Is it finished yet ? " " No, nor begmi," answered he, without raising his eyes. " A very small one answers all my purposes." Priscilla threw me an upbraiding glance. But 1 spoke again, with a bitter and revengeful emotion, as if flinging a poisoned arrow at Hollingsworth's heart. " Up to this moment," I inquired, " how many criminals have you reformed ? " " Not one," said HoUingsworth, with his eyes still fixed on the ground. " Ever since we parted, I have been busy with a single murderer." BLITHEDALE PASTURE. 595 Then the tears gushed into my eyes, and 1 forgave him; for I remembered the wild energy, the passion- ate shi'iek, with which Zenobia had spoken those words, — " Tell him he has murdered me I Tell him that I 'U haunt him ! " — and I knew what murderer he meant, and whose vindictive shadow dogged the side where Priscilla was not. The moral which presents itself to my reflections, as drawn from Hollingsworth's character and errors, is simply this, — that, admitting what is called philan- thropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often use- ful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes. It ruins, or is fearfully apt to ruin, the heart, the rich juices of which God never meant should be pressed violently out, and distilled into alcoholic liquor, by an unnat- ural process, but should render life sweet, bland, and gently beneficent, and insensibly influence other hearts and other lives to the same blessed end. I see in Hollingsworth an exemplification of the most awful truth in Bimyan's book of such, — from the very gate of heaven there is a by-way to the pit ! But, all this while, we have been standing by Ze- nobia's grave. I have never since beheld it, but make no question that the grass grew all the better, on that little parallelogram of pasture-land, for the decay of the beautiful woman who slept beneath. How Nature seems to love us! And how readily, nevertheless, without a sigh or a complaint, she converts us to a meaner purpose, when her highest one — that of a conscious intellectual life and sensibility — has been untimely balked ! While Zenobia lived. Nature was proud of her, and directed all eyes upon that radiant 596 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. presence, as her fairest handiwork. Zenobia perished. Will not Nature shed a tear ? Ah, no ! — she adopts the calamity at once into her system, and is just as well pleased, for aught we can see, mth the tuft of ranker vegetation that grew out of Zenobia's heart, as with all the beauty which has bequeathed us no earthly representative except in this crop of weeds. It is because the spirit is inestimable that the lifeless body is so little valued. XXIX. MILES COVERDALE's CONFESSION. It remains only to say a few words about myself. Not improbably, the reader might be willing to spare me the trouble ; for I have made but a jDoor and dim figure in my own narrative, establishing no separate interest, and suffering my colorless life to take its hue from other lives. But one still retains some little con- sideration for one's self ; so I keep these last two or three pages for my individual and sole behoof. But what, after all, have I to tell ? Nothing, noth- ing, nothing ! I left Blithedale within the week after Zenobia's death, and went back thither no more. The whole soil of our farm, for a long time afterwards, seemed but the sodded earth over her grave. I coidd not toil there, nor live upon its products. Often, how- ever, in these years that are darkening around me, I remember our beautiful scheme of a noble and unself- ish life ; and how fair, in that first summer, appeared the prospect that it might endure for generations, and be perfected, as the ages rolled away, into the system of a people and a world ! Were my former associates now there, — were there only three or four of those true-hearted men still laboring in the sun, — I some- times fancy that I should direct my world-weary foot- steps thitherward, and entreat them to receive me, for old friendship's sake. More and more I feel that we had struck upon what ought to be a truth. Posterity 598 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. may dig it up, and profit by it. The experiment, so far as its original projectors were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure ; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dpng, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the town-paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly afield. Alas, what faith is requisite to bear up against such results of generous effort ! My subsequent life has passed, — I was going to say happily, — but, at all events, tolerably enough. I am now at middle age, — well, well, a step or two beyond the midmost point, and I care not a fig who knows it ! — a bachelor, with no very decided purpose of ever being otherwise. I have been twice to Europe, and spent a year or two rather agreeably at each visit. Being well to do in the world, and having nobody but myself to care for, I live very much at my ease, and fare sumptuously every day. As for poetry, I have given it up, notwithstanding that Dr. Griswold — as the reader, of course, knows — has placed me at a fair elevation among our minor minstrelsy, on the strength of my pretty little volmne, published ten years ago. As regards human progress (in spite of my irrepres- sible yearnings over the Blithedale reminiscences), let them believe in it who can, and aid in it who choose. If I could earnestly do either, it might be all the bet- ter for my comfort. As Hollingsworth once told me, I lack a purpose. How strange ! He was ruined, morally, by an overplus of the very same ingredient, the want of which, I occasionally suspect, has rendered my own life all an emptiness. I by no means wish to die. Yet, were there any cause, in this whole chaos of hiunan struggle, worth a sane man's dying for, and MILES COVERDALE'S CONFESSION. 599 which my death would benefit, then — provided, how- ever, the effort did not involve an unreasonable amount of trouble — metliinks I might be bold to offer up my life. If Kossuth, for example, would pitch the battle- field of Himgarian rights within an easy ride of my abode, and choose a mild, sunny morning, after break- fast, for the conflict. Miles Coverdale would gladly be his man, for one brave rush upon the levelled bay- onets. riui;her than that, I should be loath to pledge myself. I exaggerate my own defects. The reader must not take my own word for it, nor believe me altogether changed from the young man who once hoped stren- uously, and struggled not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine have gained honor in the world ; frost- ier hearts have imbibed new warmth, and been newly happy. Life, however, it must be owned, has come to rather an idle pass with me. Would my friends like to know what brought it thither ? There is one secret, — I have concealed it all along, and never meant to let the least whisper of it escape, — one foolish little secret, which possibly may have had something to do with these inactive years of meridian manhood, with my bachelorship, with the unsatisfied retrospect that I fling back on life, and my listless glance towards the future. Shall I reveal it ? It is an absurd thing for a man in his afternoon, — a man of the world, more- over, with these three white hairs in his brown mus- tache and that deepening track of a crow's-foot on each temple, — an absurd thing ever to have happened, and quite the absurdest for an old bachelor, like me, to talk about. But it rises to my throat ; so let it come. I perceive, moreover, that the confession, brief as it shall be, will throw a gleam of light over my behavior 71.0053 600 THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. throughout the foregoing incidents, and is, indeed, es- sential to the full understanding of my story. The reader, therefore, since I have disclosed so much, is entitled to this one word more. As I write it, he will charitably suppose me to blush, and turn away my face : — I — I myself — was in love — with — Priscilla !